THE LIVING CHRIST 



The direct manifestation of Deity to 
Man is in His own image, that is in 

Man We are not made now 

in any other image than God's. There 
are, indeed, the two states of this image — 
the earthly and the heavenly, but both 
Adamite, both htiman, both the same like- 
ness; only one defiled and one pure. So 
that the soul of man is still a mirror, 
wherein may be seen, darkly, the image oj 
the mind of God. These may seem dar- 
ing words. I am sorry that they do; but 
I am helpless to soften them. Discover 
any other meaning in the text, if you are 
able. The flesh-bound volume 

is the only revelation that is, that was, or 
that can be. In that is the image of God 
painted; in that is the law of God writ- 
ten; in that is the promise of God re- 
vealed. Know thyself; for through thy- 
self only thou canst know God. 

— Ruskin. 



THE LIVING CHRIST: 



AN EXPOSITION OF THE 
IMMOETALITY OF MAN 
IN SOUL AND BODY. 



BY 

M 

PAUL ' T Y N E R . 



"/ am the resurrection and the life" 

— JOHN, xi. 25. 




DENVEB, COLO. 
THE TEMPLE PUBLISHING COMPANY. 



COPYRIGHT 
l897. 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



PRINTED AT 

Zbc Gemple press, 

DENVER, COLO. 



INTRODUCTION. 



These pages are written to inform the 
world of a discovery which, it is verily 
believed, must mark the dawn of such 
glory of human development in every 
department of life as shall, within the 
next hundred years, place man as far 
in advance of his present position as 
that is beyond the point reached by the 
beasts that perish. 

Fortunately for its early acceptance 
by all thinking men and women, this 
discovery is not put forward for the 
first time in the present statement. It 
is now presented, rather, as a recovery 
of that which was lost; a fuller and 
clearer recognition of that which, until 
now, has been seen by most men only 
"as through a glass darkly." It is hoped 
to make plain that this larger recogni- 
tion of man's immortality, the grandest 



Vlll 



INTRODUCTION. 



truth so far grasped by the human mind, 
is attributed not to any particular reve- 
lation to the author, but to a develop- 
ment of human consciousness shared by 
him with the race. 

The truth which is now re-asserted 
was distinctly declared in words and 
unmistakably demonstrated in action by 
the First Man of the race who knew the 
truth and embodied it in his own per- 
son. It is this: 

The man living in absolute conscious- 
ness of his oneness with the Father, — with 
Eternal Life, — is no longer subject to 
death; is no longer subject to the final 
destruction of his physical body, nor to 
any of those lesser degrees of death which 
we call disease, deformity, infirmity, and 
old age. He may, if he chooses — so obeying 
the law of life — live perpetually in the 
body of flesh, putting on immortality in 
place of mortality and incorruption in 
place of corntption. 

In the following pages, it is aimed to 
present, with all possible clearness and 
conviction, the grounds which seem to 



INTRODUCTION. 



IX 



establish the fact that man's immortality 
is as essentially an attribute of life here 
as hereafter, in the body of visible flesh 
as in the invisible soul. The power to 
perpetuate life in ever increasing 
strength, fullness and beauty of mani- 
festation — in society and in the individ- 
ual — is shown to be entirely in accord- 
ance with natural law, as with scriptural 
teaching. This power requires only the 
awakening of man to fuller conscious- 
ness of his true nature for its exercise, 
not merely in isolated instances of ab- 
normal spiritual development, but as a 
normal experience. Some attempt is 
also made to indicate what this realiza- 
tion of our victory over death means as 
to the possibilities opened up to hu- 
man attainment, in realms physical 
and realms spiritual; what man may do 
with the body he shall have made im- 
perishable. Giving attention chiefly to 
the demonstration of man's attainment 
of immortality in the body of flesh, it 
will be made plain that this victory over 
the last enemy necessarily carries with 



X 



INTRODUCTION. 



it absolute supremacy and control over 
any and all conditions of that flesh, as 
of other matter, — over change, disease, 
accident or violence in any degree me- 
nacing the perfect health and perfect 
life of that body; the absolute subjection 
of all obstacles and barriers on the material 
plane; time and distance, walls and 
mountains, seas and rivers, heat and 
cold, light and darkness. 

At the outset, it is found necessary to 
warn the reader against a confusion of 
mind concerning the theory of bodily 
immortality, from which even fair and 
candid truth-seekers do not easily free 
themselves. Immortality, and the abso- 
lute dominion over all forms of matter 
belonging to the immortalized man, is 
distinctly claimed for man in a physical 
body, and to be attainable by another 
and better process than that we call 
death. Just as distinctly, immortality 
for the physical body in itself, and as it 
is at any particular moment, is not 
claimed, and not considered desirable. 
The physical body must be changed 



INTRODUCTION. 



XI 



It is a body that is constantly changing, 
and one peculiarly susceptible of change. 
The body in which Jesus passed through 
walls and closed doors, appearing and 
disappearing at will, was a body of 
"flesh and bones/' as he declared, — a 
physical body. But it was also a spirit- 
ualized body, flesh and blood so raised 
in vibration as to become instantly re- 
sponsive to the will. Its tangibility 
could be increased or decreased at 
pleasure. This does not mean a rever- 
sion to to the old idea of spiritual 
bodies, born out of the death and de- 
struction of the physical form. On the 
contrary, death is to be conquered by 
raising the physical body into higher 
life. Success is won at last through the 
lessons taught by so-called failures. 
Through many errors we come into 
recognition of truth, — through many 
deaths we come into the consciousness 
of the endless life and its power, in 
which we are made. When we shall 
have attained that consciousness "there 



xii 



INTRODUCTION. 



shall be no more death," because there 
shall be no more need of death. 

The chapters that follow were origi- 
nally delivered as a course of lectures 
during the spring of 1896, at the Church 
of the Messiah in New York, and re- 
peated last July and August in Unity 
Church, Denver. It has been thought 
best — perhaps at some sacrifice of lite- 
rary finish — to preserve the lecture 
form, in the belief that if the relation 
of speaker and audience is kept in view, 
the printed word may hold something 
of the directness of the spoken word. 

In closing this introduction, it may 
not be improper to record the fact that 
an important outcome of these lectures 
has been the organization of the Civic 
Church of Denver, a movement de- 
signed to give practical meaning and 
effect to the suggestions here offered as 
to the bringing in of the Kingdom of 
God. Paul Tyner. 

Denver, Colo., May 4th, 1897, 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Introduction vii 

CHAPTER L 

The Risen Christ a Present Reality I 

CHAPTER II. 
The Quickening of Social Evolution in the New 

Light 17 

CHAPTER ILL 
Church Union in the Resurrection of Real 

Religion 27 

CHAPTER IV. 
Perpetual Growth of the Body a Necessary Con- 
sequence of Perpetual Life in the Soul 35 

CHAPTER V. 
The Incarnation of the Divine in the Personality 
of Jesus a Prophecy of its Incarnation in all 

Humanity 42 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Failure of Buddhism Explained in the New 
Light on Man's Nature and Destiny Shed by 

Christ's Resurrection 52 

CHAPTER VII. 
Larger Life in an Awakening of the Civic Con- 
sciousness 65 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Doctrine of the Resurrection and the Spirit- 
ual Body 72 

CHAPTER IX. 

Scriptural Evidences of Bodily Immortality 88 

CHAPTER X. 
Scriptural Evidences of Bodily Immortality Con- 
tinued 102 

CHAPTER XI. 
Indications of Man's Deathlessness in Nature — 

Death Not Inherent in Living Matter 117 

CHAPTER XII. 
Scientific Argument Continued — Lessons of 

Longevity— What Time Is 130 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Further Evidences in Nature; the Universality of 
Life, — A Basis of Mental Healing ij8 



CHAPTER XIV. PAGE 
Scientific Grounds for a Belief in Immortality 
Furnished by Psychic Laws and Phenomena. . 140 
CHAPTER XV. 
Arguments for the Immortality of the Soul Which 
Also Go to Prove the Immortality of the Body. 166 
CHAPTER XVI. 
The Divine Body a Product of the Divine Life.. . 177 

CHAPTER XVII. 
As a Man Thinketh in His Heart, So Is He, in 
Body as Well as Soul; this from the Very Na- 
ture of His Substance and Structure 191 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
The Law of Life is the Law of Use — Process by 
Which Jesus Performed His Mighty Works — 

Genesis of Mental Healing 197 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Vision Means Consciousness, Knowledge, Power, 

Life 209 

CHAPTER XX. 
Errors of Asceticism — The Image of God in Sex 
— Fear the Seed of Weakness and Death — 
Life and Death not Polar Opposites, but Ver- 
bal Contradictions 219 

CHAPTER XXI. 
How to Immortalize the Flesh — Attunement of 
the Nerves to the Sun, Sea and Mountain Vi- 
brations in Sympathetic Harmony 229 

CHAPTER XXII. 
The Master and His Work — A Conversation and 

a Journey 236 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
The Master and His Work Continued: A Vision 

of the City of Christ 256 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Christ's Second Coming — Reasons for a Per- 
sonal Reappearance or Jesus to All — Advent- 
ist Expectation and the Messianic Tradition 

of the Jews 285 

CHAPTER XXV. 

The Signs of the Coming of the Son of Man 305 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
The Law of Love — Its Expression in Sex the 
Key to Immortalization 320 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



CHAPTER FIRST. 

The Risen Christ a Present Reality. 

The statement "Consciousness of 
oneness with Eternal Life means power 
to realize that onenes and to manifest it 
in supremacy over all conditions negative 
to Eternal Life," carries its proof with 
it. The invincible logic of this state- 
ment appealed to me, as it has appealed 
to many others, long before the illumi- 
nation that opened my mind to its fuller 
meaning. 

I had long felt in my soul that the 
predicate as to oneness with God was 
sound; and I had reasoned that, with an 
omnipresent God filling the universe, 
there was no room anywhere for any- 
body or anything that was not God; but 
I went down with the grippe and suffered 



2 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



more or less from colds and over-work 
and sewer-gas poisoning, just as if the 
great truth had never been known to 
me. Indeed, I see now that my intel- 
lectual acceptance of the truth was very 
much of the sort I should have accorded 
to the statement that men fly on the 
planet Mars, — that is, to a fact having 
no apparent relation to my present life 
and the body I live in. My intuitive 
perception of "God's oneness with Man" 
did not materialze in a manifestation of 
his oneness with me, and of my own 
oneness with my own body. For this, my 
reason demanded further confirmation, 
tangible proof. 

Only a few days before the great illu- 
mination came to me, I had defined the 
need for the world thus: this truth of 
man's possible immortalization of his 
body is the greatest so far perceived in 
the history of the race. It means al- 
most inconceivable progress in power 
and beauty, as the result of man's 
recognition in this new light of his true 
nature, and his response to the call this 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



3 



new conception of his nature must make 
upon character and conduct. There is 
but one thing, however that can prove 
it to the general satisfaction, and that is 

the visible presence in the midst of men of 
a man who shall have lived in the flesh 
on earth, among men, for a period much 
longer than the u alloted span' of the 
scriptures, for a period longer than the 
recorded years of any man who has died 
and who, — with all this length of days, 
— manifests in his body no shadow of 
change, or turning to decay. 

So, imagining that this truth was, at 
present, only in its dawning upon the 
human mind, it seemed to me that the 
world would have to wait a thousand 
years, at least, for such a manifestation 
of it as would be convincing to the 
race. And I thought of the age- 
long patience and struggle and sorrow 
and suffering and fortitude and endur- 
ance — of the god-like heroism of that 
soul who, in God's own good time, 
should be raised up for this divine work 
— and how all the waiting and travail 



4 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



and tribulation and endeavor would be 
but a small price to pay for so glorious 
a redemption! 

It has been well said that "the small 
faiths can be proved; the larger, — say 
the law joi gravitation, — can at least be 
stated; but the greatest faiths and 
the fearlessness of them, cannot be set 
forth in satisfying words, because no 
merely intellectual process generates 
them; living, helping being the immor- 
tal, is the only thing which makes one 
sure of immortality." 

At daybreak of Friday, the eleventh of 
May, 1895, I woke into full and abso- 
lute knowledge of the great fact which, 
to me, proves man's immortality here 
and now, and in the body of flesh we 
know. I knew that a man had lived 
nearly nineteen hundred years and 
knowing only fuller and fuller life 
with the passing of the years, had 
lived and still lives in the same 
body in which, in the beginning of 
that period, he walked the earth 
a man of flesh and blood. This man, 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



5 



in whom humanity came to full flower 
with the conscious manifestation of 
his oneness with Eternal Life in the 
thirty-third year of his present incar- 
nation, has really destroyed the last 
enemy, which is death. 

To-day, in Europe and America; 
Australia and Africa; India and the isles 
of the sea, wherever the Father is wor- 
shipped in spirit and in truth — as in the 
Judea of Herod the Great — Jesus the 
Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, 
lives in the midst of us! For this cause 
came he into the world; that he might 
be a witness to the truth; a living, unim- 
peachable witness of the truth that shall 
make us free — the truth of man's relig- 
ion (reunion) with God, through absolute 
spiritual self-consciousness — with God, 
with the Eternal, Omnipotent and Om- 
niscient Source and Fountain of Life, 
"in whom we live and move and have 
our being," — without whom we are not! 

I have said I knew this greatest fact in 
the history of humanity in a moment; 
that what before was as unknown to me 



6 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



as was the western continent to Colum- 
bus before he sighted land, became in 
an instant a known reality; as much a 
part of my consciousness as was the air 
I breathed; a truth as yet faintly com- 
prehended in its fullness, but a truth 
firmly grasped, irrevocable and inde- 
structible; an eternal verity written in 
letters of fire on my brain and in 
my heart — and so on the mind and in 
the heart of this age, and of all future 
ages. 

Opening my eyes on the first rays of 
morning light illuminating my room, I 
thought of the oneness of Eternal Light 
and Life in a vague way, when my at- 
tention was seemingly diverted by the 
image of a monk's tonsured head; and I 
thought of the crown of thorns it sym- 
bolized. Then the whole sublime 
tragedy of the passion moved vividly 
and rapidly before my eyes; the scourg- 
ing, the pillory, the cuffs and blows, the 
jibes and jeers, the mockery and deris- 
ion of that crowning with thorns; the 
painful progress to Golgotha, hooted by 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



7 



the blind and cruel mob; the torture 
and ignominy of the nailing to the cross, 
the cry of agony telling that the last 
dregs of the cup had been drained; the 
shout of victory that proclaimed "ft zs 
finished!" I saw then the spear thrust; 
I saw the burial of the sublime temple 
of the Divine thus laid low, and I saw — 
the resurrection on the third day! 

At this point, my mind opened to the 
great fact, as to a flood of life. He rose 
from the dead. He never died again! 
He lives! The air in my room 
seemed to vibrate with a more in- 
tense light than was ever seen on 
land or sea. My brain and nerves 
my blood and muscles, all my being 
vibrated in sympathetic unison with 
this light, and, in the midst of its shin- 
ing glory, I beheld — the Divine Man, 
the Undying Man — beheld him face to 
face, and knew that it was he in very 
flesh and bones, as in flesh-transcend- 
ing soul; knew that it was he and not 
another. 

Ah, the sublimity of that recognition! 



8 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



He in whom death was for the first 
time swallowed up in victory lives, — not 
as a radiant and glorified angel, far re- 
moved from the race of man; not as 
some more than human deity of tran- 
scendent benignancy and power, reign- 
ing in some far off heaven — but as man 
among men, the Elder Brother of the 
race in truth, striving, suffering, sor- 
rowing, struggling still; shoulder to 
shoulder and heart to heart with us, 
as he has striven and suffered and 
struggled year after year and century 
after century; conquering still; one with 
us in infinite love, infinite understand- 
ing, infinite patience, and infinite faith 
in God and in Man. 

The truth Christ came into the world 
that he might bear witness to is, plainly 
and specifically, the truth manifested in 
the grand fact which summed up every 
word and act of the Master's that had 
gone before his resurrection; the truth 
he "died to prove " only in the sense 
that it was necessary he should die in 
order that he might rise again — the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



9 



truth of maris trmmph over death. 
He who has known the deepest and 
most intense ecstacies of human sense; 
he who has reveled in the joy which 
once, at least, brings heaven into the 
heart of every man and woman — he may 
imagine some glimmering of the high- 
est, holiest, gladness of love which 
filled and thrilled me in the hour 
when I began to realize the bound- 
less depth, the infinite tenderness, 
the perfect understanding, the unfail- 
ing patience, the splendid heroism, the 
sublime self-sacrifice and the absolute 
oneness with his beloved of this man's 
love! The transports of admiration 
born in my heart by the contemplation 
of this divinest human love, and its 
transcendent greatness, left no room 
for further thought in the first hour of 
my discovery. In the second hour, my 
mind was carried from this height (on 
which the world may well have lingered 
over long) , to the next beyond; to the 
height from which we may begin to see 
the full meaning of Christ's victory. 



10 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



"And I, if I be lifted up, shall lift all 
men with me." These words sounded 
in my ears with new meaning. Because 
he that was called Jesus of Nazareth 
has conquered death, the race has con- 
quered death! One man has proved 
himself to be "the captain of his soul, 
the master of his fate." Therefore, 
man is immortal, — Man created in the 
image of his Maker, man the microcosm 
of that Eternal All of Being, of which the 
universe is the macrocosm; man the 
crowning manifestation of the Imma- 
nent and Eternal; man into whom God 
breathed the breath of life — the never 
dying life — man has awakened from the 
deep sleep, has remembered 

. . . . "the glories he hath known 
And that imperial palace whence he came," 

Standing upon his feet, rising into re- 
cognition of his oneness with his Father, 
Man has claimed, secured and forever 
possesses his birthright — breathes again 
the breath of life that was breathed into 
him in the beginning. The everlasting 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



II 



Witness of the Truth that shall make 
men free, lives on, lives ever! 

I was asked by the near friend to 
whom this illumination was first confided 
what I had seen or heard? Until she ut- 
tered the question I had not thought of 
the form or absence of form through 
which the truth had become known to 
me; I could only answer: "Seen, heard? 
It was very much more than that. My 
eyes had ceased to see, my ears heard 
not, — yet no seeing, no hearing, could 
add an atom to my knowledge of this 
fact and the truth it demonstrates be- 
yond all question; no seeing or hearing 
could destroy, or in the least weaken, 
the knowledge that has bloomed in my 
heart in the silence/' 

Let it not be supposed for a moment, 
however, that I expect this statement of 
my own experience to be sufficient 
evidence for the world, or that I 
deem the fact I declare to be of 
so mystical and occult a nature as 
to be incapable of demonstration. On 
the contrary, I am firmly convinced 



12 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



that every fact in the universe is 
provable, and that a fact once known 
and recognized by one man must, in 
time, be recognized and known by all 
men. Being absolutely sure of my fact, 
I have no fear in regard to the proofs. 
They cannot fail to come in good time 
and abundantly. If I may be permitted 
the comparison, I stand toward those 
who have in the past argued and spe- 
culated upon man's immortality in much 
the same relation as did Columbus to 
the philosophers and geographers who, 
long before his voyage, insisted that 
there was a continent in the western 
ocean, or a western passage to the Indies. 
If the fact of the living Christ, to com- 
pare great things with small, may be 
considered as the terra incognita, whose 
shores I have touched (not yet ex- 
plored) , these first feeble evidences of 
my discovery may be accepted in evi- 
dence, as were the Indian men and 
women, the birds, animals and plants, 
that Columbus took home to Spain — as 
evidence sufficient, at least, to lead 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



13 



other voyagers and explorers in this di- 
rection, and so to bring the fact I but 
touch upon, more and more fully into 
the knowledge of mankind. 

I have said that my perception of the 
living Christ was more than physical 
seeing or hearing. The perception of 
his physical presence through the phy- 
sical senses was included in a larger 
mode of perception so distinctly that I 
felt convinced that I had indeed looked 
upon the living form of the Redeemer; 
that mine eyes had beheld him and 
not another, not only on this occasion, 
but also two years before — then not 
understanding the fact. It was in the 
spring of 1893, while living in 
New York. According to custom, we 
had been sitting together in the si- 
lence, my friend and I, with minds pas- 
sive and open to the influx of divine 
spirit invited by the thought of oneness 
with God. Frequently, in such sittings, 
there came to us from beyond the veil, 
visibly and audibly, thinkers and teach- 
ers whom we had learned to call 



14 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



friends; who have brought us comfort 
in time of trial, light in darkness, con- 
solation and counsel of the wisest. 
These friends, on this occasion, had 
passed out of the sphere of clairvoyant 
vision; the conversation was followed 
by a deep and impressive silence last- 
ing several minutes, when suddenly, 
and yet as if it had always been there, 
the atmosphere of the room was vibrant 
with a white light which seemed to fill 
our souls with the peace that passeth 
all understanding. Looking up, I be- 
held such a vision of radiant glory as 
must have blessed the eyes of the 
disciples who went up into the 
Mount of Transfiguration and there 
gazed upon the Lord, when his gar- 
ments were of the whiteness of pure 
light, and his face shone as the sun. I 
dare not attempt to put into words the 
ineffable beauty and splendor, the peace 
and power of that vision, nor the gen- 
tleness and calmness, the sweet assur- 
ance, with which he spoke the words: 
"Lo, I am with you alway, even to the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 15 



end of the world!" Christ became real 
to me in that hour as he had never been 
before. It was very different, in ways 
difficult to explain, from the clairvoy- 
ant vision; so real and absolute was 
it in physical manifestation, that I 
felt certain my companion, although 
not clairvoyant, must have seen and 
heard as I did. But she said she had 
only seen "a great white light" and 
felt a glorious presence and a profound 
peace. It was such a "white light" as 
Paul saw on his way to Damascus, I 
have no doubt; the light which hid the 
glory of the Man as the sunlight hides 
the stars. 

If I had not thus looked upon the 
Savior of Men in the flesh and failed to 
realize the fact in its fullness then and 
at various other times in the interval of 
two years, it would now be almost im- 
possible for me to understand how it 
could come to pass, that the disciples, 
to whom he showed himself after his 
resurrection, failed to realize the true 
nature of his immortalization in the 



16 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



flesh. With this experience, it will be 
thought that I must have been blind 
indeed, not to have known the truth 
sooner. Aye, more blind, more deaf, 
more dense even, than has been the 
whole Christian world for nearly nine- 
teen centuries. Having eyes we see 
not, and, having ears, hear not. Yet 
as I have groped my way through the 
darkness into light, helped by the 
gleams that have penetrated to my 
spiritual and mental perception, so I 
have no doubt the race has come, and 
is coming forward through errors and 
half truths which, dying and put under 
foot, become "stepping stones to higher 
things/' 



CHAPTER SECOND. 

A Quickening of Social Evolution in the 
New Light. 

The greatness of meaning which the 
truth of man's immortality holds for 
humanity grows upon one daily. It can 
only be fairly understood by compari- 
son with those epoch-marking, world- 
moving events that stand out in plain 
view as mountain peaks on the map of 
human advance. To the invention of 
the printing press we owe a mighty in - 
tensification and multiplication of the 
power of human speech and human in- 
telligence; the spread of Christianity in 
the first five centuries of our era, and 
the rise into supreme power of the or- 
ganization built upon it, may well be 
regarded as marvelous; the discovery 
of the new world brought with it a mag- 
nificent expansion and enrichment of 



l8 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



human powers and activity; men were 
made consciously nearer to God, the 
world over, by the birth of religious 
freedom in the revolt of Luther, and by 
the birth of political liberty in the rise 
of republicanism on the ruins of mon- 
archy in France and America; the in- 
dustrial revolution, which rose like the 
fabled geni from Watts' tea-kettle, has 
so completely transformed our meth- 
ods of production and exchange within 
the century now closing, that the in- 
crease of material wealth in this time 
has been greater than in the preceding 
twenty centuries. Although the won- 
ders of the electrical age are only in 
their beginnings, they have already 
thrown the marvels of steam into the 
shade. All these stand out in bold re- 
lief. Yet greater than all these, surely, 
— more important to human growth 
and development in every direction; in 
art, science, ethics, religion, philoso- 
phy, education and government, — must 
be deemed this discovery, which pre- 
sents to the world solid scientific bases 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 19 



for the concrete and early realization, 
as a normal and general condition, of 
that dream of mankind through all the 
ages: absolute command over strength 
and weakness, health and disease, life 
and death, in the individual body of flesh 
and blood, here and now! The veritable 
philosopher's stone which shall trans- 
mute all baser matters into purest gold; 
the fountain of perpetual youth, vainly 
looked for by Ponce de Leon; the elixir 
of life so long sought for by the old al- 
chemists, — all are at last placed within 
the reach of mankind. For I hold the 
perpetuation of life in ever-increasing 
strength, fullness and beauty, in the in- 
dividual as in the race, and in the body 
as in the soul, to be a power inherent 
in every individual and one whose 
conscious development and mastery 
present no greater difficulties than do 
the attainment of proficiency in painting 
or music, algebra or geometry. 

With general recognition of man's 
immortality in this larger sense, as a 
starting point, and with its larger 



20 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



demands upon character and conduct, 
I see in the near future such a develop- 
ment of human powers and faculties as 
must, in the next fifty years, bring us 
advances in science, philosophy reli- 
gion and art, wealth and culture, laws 
and learning, greater far than the pro- 
gress of the last five hundred years. 

True, we may not all immortalize our 
bodies at once, any more than we have 
all become Platos or Shakespeares; but 
the number of the immortals will in- 
crease constantly, and the general level 
of life will be quickly raised. Joy will 
become a normal condition. Poverty 
and sickness, fighting and swindling, will 
soon become as obsolete as cannibalism. 

The risen Christ, the conquering 
Christ, the invincible Christ, the se- 
rene and certain Christ, it is whose 
oneness with God through oneness with 
man presents absolute and unquestiona- 
ble demonstration of the present profit 
and practicability of his teaching and 
example; of the gain through it, in a 
very real sense, of that Eternal Life, 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



21 



beside which "the whole world" without 
it were but as dust in the balance. His 
victory over death, "The Great De- 
stroyer," and until now the "Prince of 
this World," — affords fullest and most 
convincing evidence that a life in ac- 
cordance with his doctrine is profitable 
in this world, as in any other, and more 
immediately than in any other. Noth- 
ing it seems to me, could be more logi- 
cal than Tolstoi's argument that "If in 
this world a life in accordance with 
the doctrine of Jesus is not profitable, 
his doctrine cannot be true." * 

"Persecutions" are promised, with 

* Count Tolstoi's conception of Christianity, hovv T ever 
noble and impressive as a demonstration that "the life is more 
than the meat and the body than raiment," is fatally lackiog, 
it seems to me, in a comprehension of the true nature of 
woman and of sex. His low appraisal of woman's place and 
importance is that of the Mosaic, rather than the Christian 
dispensation. Consequently, we find Tolstoi, with all his 
greatness and honesty, making religion and life crude and un- 
lovely, hard, dark and angular,— abandoning and despising ail 
that is beautiful and best in human expression (and develop- 
ment through expression) in art, music and the drama. Eis 
error is that of the ascetic in all ages— a failure to distinguish 
between the use and the abuse of the aesthetic faculties ; be- 
tween the right direction, which makes for grace, refinement 
and the highest idealism in living, and the misdirection which 
drags all high and holy powers in the mire. 



22 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



blessings to those who renounce houses 
and lands, sister and brother, father 
and mother, husband or wife,for Christ's 
sake; but they are to have all these 
very possessions and relationships "a 
hundredfold" — and "persecution" under 
such circumstances, is not so dreadful a 
thing nor its endurance so difficult. In 
fact, it might be welcomed as affording 
excellent opportunity to manifest and 
exalt the truth that is in us. It is not to 
be counted, compared with the profitless 
persecution, wretchedness and misery 
which are the accompaniment of the 
selfish, personal life, sunk in self-gratifi- 
cation and heedless of the suffering or 
conquering of the race. 

This living Christ must bring Christ- 
endom to a clearer and livelier recog- 
nition of the truth that the body in a 
real and literal sense is "the temple of 
the living God." The truth he brings 
points plainly to the recognition, in ev- 
ery state or national system of educa- 
tion, of the immense importance of giv- 
ing the fullest consideration to the needs 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



23 



of the body, beginning with the babe 
before and after birth, (so ordering our 
social life that to be "born without sin" 
shall be the rule and not the exception) 
and emphasizing clearly and unmistak- 
ably the right and justice, as well as 
the wise politics and economics of the 
demand that, not in the rich man's 
home alone, but in the homes of all the 
people, the body must have fullest and 
freest nurture and development, — be 
well and regularly fed, bathed, trained 
and exercised in all wise ways. In other 
words, he brings home to us, to every 
people in their corporate, communal 
and national capacity, the truth that 
life; in any large and true sense, for 
nation or individual, requires first of all 
that every boy and girl, every man and 
woman in that nation, must share 
equally and fully in all opportunity for 
knowing the joys of impression and ex- 
pression, perception and creation; the 
truth that if any of us would follow 
Christ, and have eternal life, we must 
consider the bringing about of an 



24 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



order and arrangement in government 
and society which will secure this 
equality of opportunity, as the most 
important and immediate thing in the 
world to be done; as the thing God 
wants us to do first. 

So, in short space, shall we attain, 
among other things, to that beauty of 
the ancient Greeks which, beginning 
with recognition and appreciation of 
the flowing lines of the human body, 
has left us beauty in architecture and 
sculpture that have been the inspira- 
tion and delight of succeeding ages. 
Marcus Aurelius, in one of his latest 
meditations, long after love for Faus- 
tina had lifted his soul into larger wis- 
dom than that learned from his Stoic 
master, gives us significant hint of the 
fullness of meaning this may carry. 

"In upper ways of life, unknown Dy those beneath 
death's shadowing fold, I sat at the feet of the 
noblest lords and masters of earthly sense, of beauty 
and delight. Of them I learned the wealth of life, 
the power and glory that may be of flesh, so long 
ignored and missed. They taught me how every or- 
gan of earth and sense must needs be beautiftrlly 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 25 



grown and nobly used, to reach the most and best 
of life; how the world, even in its vilest, blackest 
earthiness, has yet a soul of immortal good and use 
at the heart of it. To live most truly and richly 
through every organ and sense of flesh, attains most 
quickly and abundantly the heavenly. Even as the 
worm must needs most heartily eat its worm fill, 
that so in strength and beauty it may transform to 
perfect butterfly, so must man right heartily, in wis- 
dom and purity, eat his earth fill, that he may trans- 
form to rich completeness in body and life .... 
He is wise who nobly cherishes and wears the form 
of matter, who grows and gathers and eats the 
flower and fruit of earth's flesh and sense in strong, 
brave love and helpfulness, as garb and staff and 
spirit food to grow his inner self by, and so help 
the world." 

In philosophy, by the supreme test of 
his own personal life and its influence 
upon the welfare of the race, the living 
Christ brings reconciliation between 
Idealism and Utilitarianism. He brings 
peace and order into our social conflict 
and unrest by his personal demonstra- 
tion of the truth of social solidarity in 
a more literal and intimate sense than 
most socialists dream of. His life af- 
fords irrefutable evidence that, for weal 
or woe, for better or worse, human 



26 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



society is absolutely one grand living 
organism, with closely interrelated 
structure and function, as actually as is 
the body of the individual man. His 
life shows us that the health and happi- 
ness of every unit of society, (which 
means above all the healthy, constant 
and harmonious activity of each unit in 
its relation to every other unit and in 
its proper place in the organism) , are 
virtually concerned in the health and 
happiness of society as a whole. Or 
rather, — since the whole comes before 
the part — that the health and happi- 
ness, which means the integrity, the 
beauty, the freedom, the vigor and the 
power of the collectivity, is vitally essen- 
tial to the health and happiness of every 
individual composing it. 



CHAPTER THIRD. 



Church Union in the Resurrection of 
Real Religion. 

In the immortal God manifested in 
immortal man, we have at last the long 
sought basis for a perfect union of all 
the various branches of the Universal 
Church. In his embodiment of all that 
is highest and best in the teachings and 
aspirations of all religions, Christ fur- 
nishes common meeting ground for 
Buddhist and Brahman, Moslem and 
Jew. In the added truth, the crowning 
truth, which his continuous life in the 
flesh now gives to the race, we have 
substantial reason for the preaching of 
his gospel "to all nations," — and espe- 
cially to those whose own great teach- 
ers had given them ethical codes and 
elevated ideals of right and wrong, to 
which Christianity, minus the living 



28 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



Christy could really add nothing. In the 
visible manifestation of his oneness with 
God, through oneness with Man in ab- 
solute love,— 'otherworldliness" will be 
banished and all the grand forces of 
religion will be directed to lifting 
this life and this world into what they 
should be, and what they will be; to 
bringing the kingdom of heaven on 
earth, to givingthe City of God, descend- 
ing out of Heaven, earthly place and 
power. Coming not to destroy, but to ful- 
fill the law (the measure of truth) given 
before his coming not only to the Jews, 
but also to other great races of men, 
he has no quarrel with any existing 
religion, on its positive side, — only ful- 
fillment, only realization, only love! 

And here a word, addressed particu- 
larly to the churches of Christendom, 
as to what the recognition of this truth 
holds for the future of religion, may 
not be out of place. They are asked to 
note that man's freedom of will, exem- 
plified in his control of the life of his 
natural body, affords unquestionable 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 29 



proof of God's existence. Choice, power 
to rise or to fall, to be perfect or im- 
perfect, healthy or diseased, alive or 
dead, and the glorious freedom to mani- 
fest this choice at every moment of ex- 
istence, are inconceivable in a product 
of merely material evolution. Such 
power of choice, on the contrary, proves 
man's oneness with God, because it is 
the attribute of the Creator and not of 
the creature. 

The churches are further asked to 
keep in mind that this immortality of the 
whole man demands for its very essence 
that oneness of each with all, which the 
Divine Founder of Christianity lived 
and died and lives again to teach man- 
kind, — each man's oneness with all men, 
— with the thief and the prostitute, as 
with the poet and the archangel; with 
all life; with the lowest atom of undif- 
ferentiated protoplasm, as with the 
glorious substance, structure and order 
of the solar system. 

Fully persuaded as I am in my own 
mind, of the truth of the revelation 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



here imparted, it is quite conceivable to 
me that this doctrine which Christ 
declares in word and life, — now, as 
nineteen centuries ago, — will be "to the 
Jews a stumbling block and to the Gen- 
tiles foolishness." Yet I also feel sure 
that the world is approaching that full- 
ness of time when many minds that 
have been slowly ripening through the 
ages are now prepared to perceive and 
accept the truth which I now attempt to 
impart, as it has been imparted to me, 
and as I accept it; and that ere long 
the great body of those who worship in 
his name will be leavened by this leaven 
of truth hidden under many signs and 
symbols, but slowly and surely through 
the centuries, and amidst all divisions 
of race and creed, working out into full 
recognition. It is not a challenge to 
the Christian Church that this recogni- 
tion contains, but a call to resurrection 
and to life. This larger, fuller knowl- 
edge of truth comes not to destroy, but 
to fulfill; to confirm in the highest de- 
monstration and development all those 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



31 



hopes, promises and teachings, which 
have, in great and increasing degree, 
helped and lifted the race in the past, 
and which are of the very essence of 
Christianity, as of all religion. 

And I have a special thought, born 
of sincere sympathy, understanding and 
regard, for the many devout and faith- 
ful followers of Christ to whom, at first, 
a new dispensation emphasizing the 
humanity of Christ, albeit with em- 
phasis on the divinity of humanity,— 
will seem to threaten with destruction 
religious ideals which they have long 
held sacred, and which seem to them 
to link Christ's mission, — his incarna- 
tion in the flesh, his teaching, his suf- 
fering, his death, his resurrection and 
ascension — with a personal triune God 
reigning in glory in some far off heaven, 
which they hope to enioy, after a sea- 
son of trial and tribulation in this "vale 
of tears." 

I have understanding and regard for 
this state of mind, because I know it of 
my own experience and can see in it, 



32 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



surely, a stepping stone that has brought 
me into the fuller perception of Christ's 
teaching I now enjoy. It is difficult to 
see how we should realize the divinity 
of Man in the concrete, if we did not 
first realize the divinity of God in the 
abstract. The very Jews who accused 
Jesus of blasphemy because he declared 
himself the Son of God and the Son of 
Man, were far on their way to a com- 
prehension of his gospel. There is no 
objection to worshiping Jesus Christ, 
if we will worship the God manifested 
in him, and worship at the same time 
the God in ourselves. 

Does infinite spirit become less for 
its manifestation in what we have 
regarded as finite form? Is it only the 
wanderer to whom home is a dear and 
holy thought? Is motherhood or father- 
hood less sacred to one who may her- 
self or himself become a parent? Is the 
filial relationship less beautiful to one 
who knows its beauty by being a son ? 
Must painting and sculpture be for- 
ever beyond the powers of one who 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 33 



honors the painter and the sculptor and 
who worships beauty? To know love, 
must it be impossible for us to become 
lovers? 

Surely this is but to ask whether or 
not the All Good, the All Wise, the All 
Powerful, the All Beautiful, — Infinite 
and Eternal Truth, Justice, Love, — 
become less worthy of worship when 
incarnated in humanity, — when made a 
comprehensible, breathing verity. It is 
to ask if the exaltation of the Divine Man 
is dependent upon the abasement of the 
divine in all other men, upon their 
prostration in the dust as poor, misera- 
ble worms. It is to ask if the worship 
of "worms" is more acceptable to God 
than is that of Man standing upon his 
feet, conscious of his oneness with God! 

"If we have not learned that God's in man 

And man in God again — 
That to love thy God is to love thy brother, 
And to serve the Lord is to serve each other — 

Then Christ was born in vain! 

If we have not learned that one man's life 

In all men lives again; 
That each man's battle fought alone 



34 



THE LIVING CHRIS! 



Is won — or lost — for every one — 
Then Christ hath lived in vain! 
********** 

If we have not learned of immortal life 

And a future free from pain — 
The kingdom of God in the heart of man 
And the living world on heaven's plan — 
Then Christ arose in vain." 



CHAPTER FOURTH. 



Perpettial Growth of the Body a Necessary 
Consequence of Perpetual 
Life in the Soul. 

Change, throughout nature, is the 
law of growth, the law of life. It is the 
law even of that manifestation of life 
which we call death. As soon as a tree 
ceases to produce, to put forth leaf, 
blossom and fruit, — growing with the 
wealth it gives, — its obedience to this 
law of change takes the form of decay 
and disintegration preliminary to its 
reorganization into other forms. So 
with man, there is no cessation of the 
movement of the molecules of his body. 
When he stops producing, stops giving, 
stops growing, in one form, that form 
instead of going forward, falls backward ; 
is disintegrated and disorganized, that 
its potencies may be given to another 



36 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



likely to make better use of it. "Unto 
everyone which hath, shall be given; 
and from him that hath not, even that he 
hath shall be taken away from him." * 

Aryan writings and traditions tell us 
the first race of men was immortal, 
in body as in soul, — and knew not 
disease or death. Death entered the 
world of men as the result of man's own 
error, not through any inevitableness of 
death in nature. By the sin of pride fell 
the angels. The fall into materiality — 
that is, into the sense or thought of hu- 
man life as contained in materiality 
alone and limited by it, — was a conse- 
quence of the error of supposing flesh 
could be separated from spirit, man from 
God, and yet "be as Gods" — that is, live 
forever. The secret of living forever is, 
after all, a very simple one. All man has 
to do is to repent y -tha,t is, turn back from 
his error,— and become as a little child. A 
little child, knowing and trusting that it 
shall be fed and cared for, goes on grow- 
ing,increasing day by day in strength and 



* Luke xix., 26. 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



37 



grace, in joy and in the power of joyful 
expression and creation. It will probably 
help us to grasp and make more com- 
pletely our own this truth of man's es- 
sential bodily immortality, if the law on 
which the whole teaching rests is put in 
the form of an axiom: 

Infinite progression in Outer Manifes- 
tation is a necessary consequence of abso- 
lute perfection in the Inner Essence of 
Infinite Being. 

The absolute perfection of God is a 
postulate which will not be denied by 
religious teachers of any creed or sect. 
It is a necessity of Deity. Nor will it 
be denied that this absolute perfection 
resides not in time or space, but in the 
infinite being oi that Spirit or essence, of 
which all outer nature is but the steadily 
increasing and enlarging manifestation 
in outer unfoldment. Our axiom, there- 
fore, cannot fail of acceptance by Re- 
ligion, in the large and inclusive sense 
of the word. It may be said, moreover, 
to sum up the essence of Christian the- 
ology, so far as it defines God and 



38 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



nature. How is it in regard to Science? 
For answer, attention is invited to two 
statements from the utterances of two 
authorities whose names stand for mod- 
ern science in its latest development. 
Neither of them can be suspected 
of even a leaning towards belief in 
Christianity — the Christianity that is 
identified in the mind of the age with 
supernaturalism, and so with denial, 
rather than assertion, of man's rightful 
place in nature. 

Says Professor Huxley, in propound- 
ing the modern doctrine of a single 
physical basis of life: 

"What truly can seem to be more obviously differ- 
ent from one another, in faculty, in form and in sub- 
stance, than the various kinds of living beings? 
What community of feeling can there be between 
the brightly colored lichen which so nearly re- 
sembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare 
rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it 
is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it 
feeds with knowledge? * * * What community of 
form or structure is there between the animalcule 
and the whale? * * * Yet * * * * protoplasm, 
simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. 
It is the clay of the potter; which, bake it and paint 
it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice and 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



39 



not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun- 
dried clod." 

Here we have a suggestion of the 
unity which runs through the infinite 
diversity of forms in nature, — and Na- 
ture is Man writ large. Even more in- 
teresting is the testimony of Herbert 
Spencer, as to the change which 
characterizes the growth of single 
individuals. 

"Metamorphosis/' he says, <4 is the universal law, 
exemplified throughout the Heavens and on the 
Earth, especially throughout the organic world; 
and, above all, in the animal division of it. No 
creature, save the simplest and most minute, com- 
mences its existence in a form like that which it 
eventually assumes; and, in most cases, the unlike- 
ness is great — so great that kinship between the first 
and the last forms would be incredible, were it not 
daily demonstrated in every poultry yard and every 
garden. More than this is true. The changes of 
form are often several: each of them being an ap- 
parently complete transformation — egg, larva, pupa, 
imago, for example. And this universal metamor- 
phosis, displayed alike in the development of a 
planet and of every seed which germinates on its 
surface, holds also of societies, whether taken as 
wholes or in their separate institutions. Not one of 
them ends as it begins; and the difference between 
its original structure and its ultimate structure is 



40 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



such that, at the outset, change of one into the 
other would have seemed incredible." — ("From 
Freedom to Bondage.") 

In no form of life does this universal 
law of metamorphosis find more re- 
markable demonstration than in that 
of the individual organism of the body 
of man. It is hardly saying too much to 
assert that in all the realm of animated 
nature there is no such difference be- 
tween any two different animals as 
there is between the infant crying in 
its nurse's arms and the same individual 
grown to man's estate and "seeking the 
bubble reputation even at the cannon's 
mouth." Even more marvelous are the 
changes revealed by a study of embry- 
ology. The germ which grows into the 
human babe in its mother's womb 
passes successively through the stages 
of mineral, vegetable, insect, fish, rep- 
tile, bird and quadruped embryos. 

The immortalization of the body of 
man is but a continuation of this pro- 
cess. The only difference is that man, 
when he has developed the conscious- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 41 



ness that he is made in the image of 
God, finds that in the human form, in 
its normal perfection and purity, he has 
reached the end of any necessity for 
structural change. All structural change 
limits while it specializes. Every ex- 
tension of structure needed to exercise 
the additional functions, as they are de- 
veloped, is, in man, made out of the ma- 
terial supplied by outer nature. He 
does not have to grow his clothes on 
his back, as do the lower animals; his 
house as does the snail; his weapons 
of offense and defense as do the ele- 
phant and the bull. With man, tools 
begin, — tools and machinery. For these 
extensions of human function in indefin- 
ite, in infinite degree, he finds no 
change in his own bodily structure ne- 
cessary, only a raising of its powers 
through expansion and enlightenment 
of consciousness — of thought — and a 
training of the body to ready and cer- 
tain obedience to this thought. 



CHAPTER FIFTH. 

The Incarnation of the Divine in the 

Personality of Jesus a Prophecy of its 

Incarnation in all Humanity. 

It is often said of Jesus of Nazareth, 
as of other reformers, that he was "in 
advance of his time." And for this, 
some people say, was he crucified, as 
the prophets before him were stoned; 
as the pioneers of truth in every age 
have suffered martyrdom. A little re- 
flection will show, however, that the 
beginning of every great advance in 
human development has been made at 
the right psychological period. This 
truth is pre-eminently manifest in the 
career and teaching of Jesus. He came 
at a critical turning point in the world's 
history — at a time when imperial Rome, 
— having reached the heights of merely 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 43 



material glory and dominion; having 

exhausted the possibilities of a social 
ideal and a social system based on the 
exaltation of might over right, of form 
over substance — had begun to totter 
toward her inevitable fall. The head 
and front of that mighty civilization were 
of gold, but its feet were "feet of clay." 
Under all its military and political great- 
ness; under its triumphs of architecture, 
underitssplendid oratory and literature; 
under its magnificent elaboration of lux- 
urious living, at the top and for the few, 
was the frightful wretchedness, the worse 
than barbarism, of the masses. Slavery, 
more brutal far than that from which 
the negro has been so lately delivered 
in our own country; slavery unparalelled 
in the awfulness of its inhumanity at any 
other time recorded in the world's his- 
tory, was the lot of millions of men and 
women,— of the majority of the human 
race. This slavery reached its most 
intense expression in the hopeless mis- 
ery of the helots, condemned to spend 
their lives in hard and unceasing toil 



44 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



and mercilessly slaughtered — perhaps 
mercifully slaughtered — when their 
strength was spent, or when their num- 
bers so increased as to alarm or annoy 
their patrician masters; but it was a 
slavery felt in varying degree in every 
class, throughout society in all the world. 
The Roman citizen vaunted himself a 
freeman; but even the empty form of 
freedom he boasted was not a general 
condition. It was a marked and highly 
prized distinction, built upon the sub- 
jection of the rest of the world to Rome. 
Even among the most favored, the 
dead-sea fruit so fair to look upon, had 
turned to ashes in the mouth. Life in- 
deed, was felt to be not worth living. 

Jesus came at the right time then. He 
was in advance of the world's time, but he 
was not in advance of his time, for the 
world waited his coming in sorrow and 
travail. The reformers right time has 
come, we may be sure, if he leads, rather 
than follows. 

Jesus came at the right time, and he 
came in the right place. His appearance 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



45 



was plainly one in obedience to what 
we are beginning to recognize as the 
law of mental causation. "The crea- 
tion is the incarnation of thoughts/' 
says Mr. W. W. Peyton, in the "Con- 
temporary Review" for June, 1896. "The 
flood, the orchid, the sunset color, the 
butterfly, are the clothing of some emo- 
tions. And we, who summarize all idea 
and emotion on the summits of creation, 
are the more perfect incarnation. The 
thinking of the Infinite Mind which un- 
derlies nature underlies us." 

Speaking of the Greek gods and god- 
desses as typical of the earliest natural 
incarnation, Mr. Peyton goes on to say: 

"The relation of the incarnations in nature to the 
Incarnation in Christ is the relation of an ascending 
series. The parts have found their whole. The 
ideas distributed in the cloud and the leaf, the emo- 
tions distributed in the daisy and the doe, are gath- 
ered up into a Personality, from whom they have 
originally come. There is a gloom and grief in the 
principle of natural selection; there is a tenderness 
and a beauty in the hues and lines of a bird's feather, 
though adaptive coloration has been acquired in a 
great struggle; there is majesty in the magnitude of 
a mountain ; there are secrets in the woodland haunts 



46 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



of the squirrel and the woodpecker. And all these 
are ideas and emotions of the Infinite Mind in 
shrines of incarnation scattered over the earth. 

" When the Greek became responsive to Christ, 
he called Him the Logos or Word, of whom the in- 
carnations in nature are the logoi or words, which 
are ever speaking and suggesting to us the Logos to 
come in the flesh. The Christ lay hidden in the 
incarnations, in the mistletoe and yule log of our 
Teutonic ancestors and the Oread and Dryad of the 
Greek. The Greek anthem of Christmas Day has 
yet to be understood and chanted in our churches. 
'In the beginning was the Eternal Mind, and He 
was God. All things were born of Him; in Him was 
the primal life. The Eternal Mind became flesh, and 
dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.' " 

At the time of the birth of Jesus, as a 
natural development of their monotheis- 
tic faith — of their practical recognition 
of the oneness of God and the oneness 
of His people — the aspirations of the 
Jewish nation had taken distinct and 
definite shape in the expectation of a 
Messiah; of the visible coming among 
men of the Son of God, a Saviour and a 
Deliverer, as Moses had been; a Royal 
Chieftain and Ruler of David's line, in 
whom Solomon in all hisgloryshouldlive 
again. This expectation was the natural 
growth also of the history of the Hebrew 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



47 



race through thousands of years, an 
experience which at last focussed, in this 
little corner of the world and in this 
handful of people, the mighty forces 
not alone of Jewish national develop- 
ment, but also of the great civilizations 
of Egypt, of Babylonia, of Greece and 
of Rome, drawn into the Jewish blood 
and thought by close contact. 

The man Jesus, was in a very true 
and literal sense, the external expres- 
sion, the flowering, the incarnation, of 
this national aspiration, this national 
thought. The Jews, as a nation, failed 
to realize the fact, because they failed to 
recognize the seed in the larger beauty 
of the flower, the tree in its fruitage, 
the outline sketch in the finished 
picture, the less contained within the 
greater, the law in its fulfillment to 
the uttermost. 

In the divine Man, the word is made 
flesh — that word which John tells us 
"was in the beginning," which "was with 
God," which "was God" — which is God! 
In the personality of the great Gali- 



48 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



lean, we have the crowning and consum- 
mation of that particular stage of the 
divine process, by which this incarna- 
tion of the Word in the Flesh has been 
made most manifest in an individual hu- 
man being. This process, — in truth as 
eternal as its cause, — may be said to have 
had its beginning, humanly speaking, 
in the first material manifestation of 
life on the first inhabited planet. It 
continued and continues through the 
ages in ever increasing fullness of mani- 
festation. The Divine Man was not a 
sudden, isolated and miraculous crea- 
tion. He was a natural growth, the 
product of evolution in the largest 
sense of the word, — of evolution and 
involution. 

That divinity which, as a manifesta- 
tion of the thought of God, was con- 
tained in essence in the first man and 
which is to-day contained in essence in 
every man, found in Jesus of Nazareth 
the fullest and most perfect individual 
manifestation we have had. He was 
enabled to manifest his essential divinity, 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 49 



however, only because, as "heir of all 
the ages," he also contained in his 
kumanness, and realized in his person- 
ality, the accumulated experiences of 
all the men of lesser development who 
had gone before. He was, he is, as 
truly Son of Man as Son of God! 

The manifestation of the Divine in 
Jesus has been spoken of as the consum- 
mation of one stage in the process by 
which the incarnation of the Divine in the 
Human, of the Word in the Flesh, has 
ever been and is ever being manifested. 
Obviously, if the Word was made Flesh, 
it was in all flesh. If God is incarnated 
in Man it is in all men. If the purpose 
of that incarnation of the Divine in 
humanity is its full and perfect mani- 
festation in humanity as a whole, — a 
necessity logically following on the re- 
cognition of its incarnation and mani- 
festation in humanity in any degree, — 
then it is plain that any manifestation 
less than this full and complete mani- 
festation, marks but a stage in the pro- 
cess. Christ in Jesus was a consumma- 



50 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



tion and a beginning; a consummation 
of that perfection of the individual 
which is the beginning of perfection in 
the race. 

He was truly the Lion of the Tribe 
of Judah. As the king of beasts ex- 
hibits the utmost perfection of structural 
organization for effective strength that 
has been developed in the animal king- 
dom below man, so Jesus manifested 
the complete and supreme individualiz- 
ation of all the racial forces of the 
Jewish character, the end and object 
of its evolution, its harvest and fruit- 
age. The word "perfection" is used 
here only in a relative, not in the 
theological and absolute sense. Ab- 
solute perfection in the expression, 
or manifestation of that absolute per- 
fection, which is an essential prin- 
ciple and attribute of Infinite Being, 
is inconceivable. If it were possible; 
that is, if any conceivable expression of 
God in time and space expressed God 
perfectly and eternally, His expression 
would be limited and bounded and 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 5 1 



not infinite. Infinite and absolute per- 
fection in essence requires by the very 
law of its being, infinite growth and 
progression in the manifestation of that 
perfection. 

** This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked 
at the crowded heaven, 

And I said to my spirit — When we become the en- 
folders of those orbs and the pleasure and 
knowledge of everything in them, 

Shall we be filled and satisfied then? 

And my spirit said, No. We level that lift to pass 
and continue beyond." 



CHAPTER SIXTH. 

The Failure of Buddhism Explained in 
the New Light on Mans Nature and 
Destiny Shed by Christ's Resurrection. 

The clearer conception of the rela- 
tion between the inner and the outer 
life, — the spiritual ideal and its material 
expression, — emphasized in the preced- 
ing chapter, brings us to a consideration 
of a most striking and important diver- 
gence between the Eastern religious 
thought and the Western; between the 
Old and the New. The Oriental mind, 
— probably after it had attained a de- 
velopment in power of beautiful ex- 
pression in art, poetry and philosophy 
as far beyond the reaches of our latest 
western expression as the Taj Mahal is 
beyond the Capitol at Washington in 
architectural beauty, — came into a reali- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 53 

zation of the fact that it was as far as 
ever from perfectly expressing that ab- 
solute perfection, which was perceived to 
be an attribute of Infinite Being. Fully 
conscious were the people of the East 
of the splendor of the heights they had 
attained, in comparison with the depths 
of merely animal existence from which 
they had emerged, and of the age-long 
journey (the thousands, tens of thou- 
sands, — according to some writers — hun- 
dreds of thousands, — of years) of toil- 
some effort and advance that lay be- 
tween. Realizing, at this stage, that 
the*, utmost perfection attainable by hu- 
manity on the outer plane of material 
and intellectual manifestation, was as 
nothing compared to the absolute per- 
fection of the Unmanifested, Universal 
and Infinite Essence of Being, they 
jumped, not unnaturally, to the conclu- 
sion voiced in the phrase which has so 
often echoed a mood of sick cynicism. 
"Vanity of vanities! All is vanity /" 
All planning and achievement, all 
material existence, were despairingly 



54 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



abandoned, condemned and accursed as 
Maya, or Illusion. Nirvana, that blessed 
rest, in the bosom of Brahma; in the 
fullness of All Being, in the perfect 
peace of the All Containing and the All 
Contained — was conceived as an ulti- 
mate through the development of the 
subjective consciousness, that so far had 
gone hand in hand with that of the ob- 
jective consciousness, — this happy state 
became the sole object of desire. Be- 
cause the state thus conceived of was 
felt to be infinitely beyond all possible 
objective attainment, expression, sensa- 
tion or existence, all external existence 
was deemed to be opposed to it, an obsta- 
cle to its final attainment. Physical life, 
therefore, instead of a good, became an 
evil, — a curse instead of a blessing. 
Death and the lessening or cessation of 
re-births, or re-incarnations, became the 
only object worth striving for, or rather, 
— since it was believed that all strife 
and effort were likely to defeat this ob- 
ject, — thought was concentrated on pas- 
sivity; on not doing, not thinking, not 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 55 



desiring; on "killing out desire," — above 
all "the desire to live." A halt was 
called! A right-about, face! A disastrous 
retreat! The whole national trend (and 
so the whole racial trend), was radi- 
cally changed. Advance was turned to 
retrogression; activity to passivity; the 
positive to the negative; the most pro- 
ductive fertility to the most barren 
waste; strength to weakness; health to 
decay; life to death; God to nothingness! 

Not in the least unmindful of the 
power and beauty of that Eastern philo- 
sophical literature, whose recent revival 
among us seems destined to exercise an 
important influence on our Western 
life, it nevertheless, seems to me that 
the fact I have pointed out contains 
lessons far more profound, and far more 
vital, than is the sublimest wisdom 
worded in the Vedas. 

When I say that the Oriental mind 
at the point of its ripest development, 
blinded by its own dazzling splendor, 
failed to grasp the real connection 
between infinite perfection in essence and 



56 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

infinite progression in the manifestation 
of that essence, it seems to me that I 
place my finger on the clear and simple 
solution of the vexed problem presented 
by the actual condition of India and its 
people to-day. The grandeur of an- 
cient India; the heights and depths of 
the ancient knowledge of the East; 
the refined subtlety of its philosophi- 
cal thought; the breadth and compre- 
hensiveness of its wisdom-religion; the 
elaboration of organization and ad- 
ministration in its social and industrial 
systems; — all these even in the dis- 
torted and imperfect glimpses of their 
broken ruins now permitted to us, ex- 
cite our wonder and admiration. 

We shall inevitably find much mean- 
ing in all this. How much more, how 
incomparably much more, meaning is 
there in the fact, that in a thousand years, 
not a single, not the slightest addition has 
been made to the glories of the ancient 
Oriental civilization; to its arts or sci- 
ences; to its religious or social develop- 
ment; to its material power, greatness 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 57 



and beauty; nay, even to the abstract 
philosophical ideals which are its high- 
est boast ? 

The spectacle which the Orient to-day 
presents is not alone one of arrested 
growth, despite the stupendous impetus 
of its marvelous advance, but worse; it 
is a spectacle of dissolution and decay; 
of a fall made only the more terrible in 
its effects by the height from which the 
downward course began. "The greater 
the height, the greater the fall." No- 
where on the face of the globe are the 
masses living in such abject poverty and 
misery; such utter ignorance and wretch- 
edness; such craven and cowardly sub- 
jection to brute force, as in Hindostan. 
They are degraded, plundered and 
preyed upon by a handful of mercenary 
conquerors and rulers. Possessing the 
most favored and fertile of lands, — a 
land of such richness and extent that 
under intelligent adminstration it might 
support several times its present popula- 
tion, not merely in comfort, but in 
abundance, these teeming millions are 



58 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



ever on the verge of starvation; ever 
at the mercy of frequently recurring 
famines; and of those even more dread- 
ful scourges, cholera and yellow fever. 

This Eastern doctrine, which trans- 
formed supernaturalism into anti-natur- 
alism, found its logical development in 
the Bhuddist belief that "the will to 
live/' is the cause of all the sorrow and 
suffering said to be inseparable from 
existence, — a theory finding later elabo- 
ration in the pessimistic philosophy of 
Schopenhauer. In the form of a per- 
verted Christianity, engrafted on a de- 
crepit and decaying Paganism, its 
blighting effects on humanity in the 
Western world are hardly less awful 
to contemplate than in the land of 
its birth. According to this doctrine, 
our natural instincts are our natural 
enemies; life is a disease and death 
its only cure. The gratification of 
our natural instincts is made a sin 
against the cardinal tenet of a sys- 
tem in which nature is identified with 
the origin of evil, and the worship of 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 59 



sorrow is raised to a religion. This doc- 
trine led, of course, to the self-torturing 
insanities of medivaeal monachism on 
the one hand and to the fierce and 
bloody torture and slaughter, during 
centuries of religious persecution, on 
the other. If physical pleasures are 
sinful and our physical instincts an 
impediment to our spiritual welfare, it 
is natural to conclude that the body 
must be treated like a wild beast, caged 
in monasteries and hermitages and sub- 
dued by all kinds of self affliction. 

In his "Secret of the East" Dr. Felix 
Oswald sums up the cost to mankind of 
this reign of pessimism under the mask 
of "Christianity," as follows. 

"These dogmas have cost the world three million 
square miles of lands which were once the garden 
spots of the earth, but have been turned into deserts 
by the neglect of rational agriculture, under the in- 
fluence of a creed which sought to withdraw the at- 
tention of mankind from secular to post-mortem con- 
cernments. . . . 'Another era of equal improvi- 
dence/ says Professor Marsh, 'would reduce this 
earth to such a condition of impoverished product- 
iveness as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, 
and perhaps even the extinction of the human spe- 



6o THE LIVING CHRIST. 



cies.' (Man and Nature.) .... The progress 
of the human race in the arts and sciences has been 
retarded at least fifteen hundred years. . . . .On 
the altar of supernaturalism, the Christian Church 
has sacrificed the lives of eighteen millions of the 
noblest and bravest of our fellowmen. Two mil- 
lions were butchered in the wars against those free- 
dom-loving children of nature, the Saxons, the 
Sarmatians and the Scandinavians; one million in 
the wars against the Arian heretics; at least five 
millions in the seven larger and four smaller cru- 
sades. The extermination of the Spanish Saracens 
reduced the population of the Peninsula by seven 
millions. One million were slaughtered in the fif- 
teen years' man-hunt against the Albigenses, the 
Thirty Years' War against the Protestant Princes, 
the massacres of the French Huguenots, the Wal- 
denses and the insurgents of the Netherlands. A 
full million human lives were devoured by the 
Moloch of the Holy Inquisition and the witch trib- 
unals, which for nearly seven centuries infested all 

the principal cities of Christian Europe 

Whole nations of freedom-loving men have been 
turned into slaves and flunkeys. The precepts of 
self-abhorrence and passive submission to tyranny 
and injustice were a direct declaration of war against 
the manly self-reliance that is the basis of all true 

independence The atmosphere of our 

whole social life is tainted with the poison of cant 

and dissimulation 'Worldly pleasures are 

still under the ban of our spiritual purists. Daily 
drudgery and daily self-denial are still considered 
the proper sphere of a law-abiding citizen, and spe- 
cial affliction a special sign of divine favor. Life 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 6l 



has become a socage duty. We do not think it nec- 
essary to alleviate the distress of the poor until it 

reaches a degree that threatens to end it 

We shudder at the barbarity of the Caesars, who 
permitted the combats of men with wild beasts, to 
cater to the amusement of the Roman populace; but 
we contemplate with great equanimity the misery 
of millions of our fellow-citizens wearing away their 
lives in mines, work-shops and factories; of millions 
of children of our own nation and country, who 
have no recreation but to sleep, no hope but obliv- 
ion; to whom the morning sun brings the summons 
of a task-master, and the summer season nothing 

but lengthened hours of weary toil The 

dogma of the reformatory value ot misery has been 
refuted by the most dreadful arguments in the 
world's history. The unhappiest nations are not on- 
ly the most immoral, but the most selfish and the 
meanest in every ugly sense of the word. Virtues 
do not flourish on a trampled soil. Genius, too, is 
a child of light. The Grecian worship of joy fav- 
ored the development of every human science, while 
the monastic worship of sorrow produced nothing 
but monsters and chimeras. . . . . Kosmos — 
i. e., beauty and harmony — was the oldest Grecian 
term for God's wonderful world; a Vale of tears' is 
the favorite 'Christian' epithet." 

Shall we not say an epithet, rather of 
the pessimistic pseudo-Christianity, that 
has so long held sway? All human his- 
tory paints in glowing, convincing colors 
the truth that, "soul needs sense, not less 



62 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



than sense needs soul." And for this 
reason the incarnation of Christ is a 
continuing incarnation — the human 
body of Jesus an undying body. 

It is clear in view of the facts cited 
that, whatever suffering may be insep- 
arable from existence, this pessimistic 
conception of life which condemns "the 
will to live " and all enjoyment of life 
as essentially evil, is responsible for an 
enormous, an awful increase and inten- 
sification of that suffering. Even if it 
be true that sorrow and suffering are 
inseparable from existence, it does not 
follow that the desire to live is there- 
fore evil. It becomes so only to the 
soul who does not recognize in himself 
something stronger and greater than 
sorrow and suffering, — to the coward 
who basely and weakly accepts suffer- 
ing as master. That the first Man of 
the Race was "a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief," unites us more 
closely to him, makes his humanity 
more real to us. The divinity of his 
humanity is demonstrated to us, how- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 63 



ever, not in his undergoing-, but in his 
overcoming, of sorrow and grief, in his 
demonstration of the superiority of the 
human soul in the human body, by its 
conquest of all enemies, even of ''the 
last enemy/' Death. It is a strengthen- 
ing, not a weakening, of the desire to 
live, that should come to us with the 
recognition of life's difficulties, — its 
pain and suffering. Life would not be 
worth living were it not for these. 
Rightly understood, there is not a 
trouble, a pain, an ache, a grief in the 
universe which may not be turned to 
account as a means of obtaining larger 
and fuller life. 

What is pain? A drum-beat, a bugle 
call, to the soul: the inexorable reveille 
that continues sounding until we waken, 
rise, put on the whole armor of God, 
and go forth against the enemy whose 
approach has been signalled; go forth 
as those who fight under the Invincible 
Captain, and for whom defeat is impos- 
sible. "To take arms against a sea of 
troubles, and by opposing end them," is 



64 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



the part of a brave man; to shirk the 
conflict is the part of a coward! But 
the gain is far more than that of merely 
ending trouble. "The kingdom shall 
be given to him that overcometh" said 
Jesus; not to him that undergoeth. We 
are kings indeed; but kings called upon 
to prove our royalty, by winning our 
thrones, — by winning and by keeping 
them, calmly, certainly, confidently. 
Ever on the alert, ever on the march, 
we shall go forth conquering and to 
conquer. 



CHAPTER SEVENTH. 

Larger Life in an Awakening of the 
Civic Consciousness. 

If we are to get a fuller life out of 
pain and sorrow, we must cease the self- 
ishness of indulgence in personal woe. 
The trials and tribulations we have so 
long cherished, as peculiarly our own 
must no longer be regarded as personal 
property, but as a social trust, so to 
speak. We are injured and oppressed, 
are we? We are hurt, pained, denied, 
neglected, our hearts wrung and our 
souls agonized? Well, what of it ? What 
right does it give us to sit in sack-cloth 
and ashes, to withdraw ourselves from 
the world for the more complete enjoy- 
ment of our misery, or to pour out our 
wailing spirit in troubled song? Our 
suffering is not ours alone. It is human 



66 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



suffering, humanity's suffering; and if 
we feel it sharply, that means we 
have something to do about it. The 
sorrows and grief that Jesus felt in his 
own person led him to closer acquain- 
tance with the sorrows and grief of the 
world, — to his healing the sick, binding 
up the broken-hearted, consoling the 
comfortless, and, at last, to the destruc- 
tion of the cause of all sorrow and 
grief, of the last enemy, in his yielding 
up of life on that tree whose leaves are 
for the healing of the nations. 

So it must always be with his true 
followers, with the followers of Truth. 
They know by experience that there is 
no such tonic for depression as lift- 
ing up other depressed people; no pos- 
sibility of dying of grief, if we console 
the sorrowful. In battling for justice 
to the world, we cease to feel the petty 
sting of personal injustice; we refuse to 
surrender to it. 

Let us remember, always, that the 
lines of life, the lines of Man, — God's 
lines, — are not vertical only; they are 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



6 7 



also and equally horizontal. They meet 
at the center, at the heart; but find no 
limit in the boundless circumference. 

Conscience, on the importance of 
which there is so much insistence in all 
religions, is essentially a social, a civic, 
rather than a merely personal virtue. 
No man can be virtuous, any more than 
he can be vicious, all by himself. The 
development of conscience depends up- 
on the development of the social, and 
especially of the civic, consciousness. In 
proportion to your realization of your 
character as a citizen, and of the duties 
and relations to the city, and to all your 
fellow citizens, which citizenship in- 
volves, will be the development of any 
conscience, any sense of right and 
wrong, worth talking about. The de- 
velopment of this conscience is only in 
its beginnings among us; but it is grow- 
ing. When it is a little further devel- 
oped, the man who robs and betrays 
his city by making false returns to the 
tax-assessor, or by prostituting public 
service to private greed and aggran- 



68 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



dizement will be reproached by his own 
soul and execrated by the community, 
as a far worse sinner than the midnight 
burglar, the bank defaulter, or the man 
who is faithless to any merely personal, 
family, or business trust. Now, these 
traitors and thieves are permitted to 
hold high posts in the market place 
and in the synagogue; are, in fact, often 
pointed to with pride as model husbands 
and fathers and exemplary church mem- 
bers. The real nature of their conduct 
is not seen, felt or understood, by them- 
selves or by their fellow citizens, or our 
cheeks would burn with shame. 

I do not want to attach too much im- 
portance to these negative indications. 
We all know there is another side. We 
know that each year shows an increas- 
ing number of men and women who ex- 
press their lively sense of a civic con- 
science in gifts of parks, gymnasiums, 
libraries and art galleries. We all take 
a very genuine pride in the beauty and 
healthfulness of our cities, and in their 
commercial and educational importance 



THE LIVING CHRIST. gg 

The maintenance of their health, beauty 
and prosperity are matters of very gen- 
uine and intelligent concern to a grow- 
ing number of our citizens. 

The stone-mason, the carver, or the 
joiner, who gave to the hidden parts 
of his work, behind the altars, or under 
the eaves in the glorious cathedrals of 
mediaeval Europe, the same perfect 
finish, the same solid and substantial 
workmanship in every detail, that he 
gave to the more exposed parts, was 
true not merely to his individual stand- 
ard, his individual conscience; but also, 
which is much more, he was true to the 
standard of his city, — to the standard of 
his Florence, his Genoa, his Venice, his 
Rouens, his Rheims, his Antwerp or Co- 
logne, his Canterbury or Chester. And 
he was true to his city, because he loved 
and was loved by his city. He was a mem- 
ber of the corporation he worked for. 
The work he did was his own work, in 
his own largest capacity — his capacity 
as a citizen. Ready acceptance was 
found, in the awakening of the civic 



70 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



spirit in its most primitive beginnings, 
at the close of the dark ages, for the 
simple gospel of Keats: 

"Beauty is truth; Truth beauty. 
This is all we know on earth, 
And all we need to know/' 

It will find fuller, clearer and intenser 
recognition in every rank and depart- 
ment of life, when the modern munici- 
pality shall be animated by a spirit as 
fully developed, as live, as free, as large 
and as growing, as the needs of the 
modern city demand. Without this spiri t 
— however large, complex and highly 
organized the outer shape which rapid 
material evolution forces upon it, — our 
modern city will be but a Frankenstein 
— a soulless monster in human shape 
ever unsatisfied and unsatisfying — find- 
ing no end to hopeless misery save in 
self-destruction. 

For these reasons, among others, we 
can but regard the wide-spread awaken- 
ing of a true municipal spirit in this 
country and in Europe, as perhaps the 
most significant social movement of our 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 71 



time. It is, in the truest sense of the 
word, a religious movement, and the 
part taken by some of the churches in 
this movement evidences a belated, but 
welcome, expansion of church ideals 
in the right direction, — an expansion 
towards, not away from Christ, — to- 
wards the enthronement of divinity in 
humanity. 

"I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the 

attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth. 
I dreamed that was the New City 01 Friends. 
Nothing was greater there than the quality of ro- 
bust love — it led the rest; 
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men 

of that city, 
And in all their looks and words." 

—Walt Whitman. 



CHAPTER EIGHTH. 

The Doctrine of the Resurrection and the 

Spiritual Body. 

When a man sitting in the sunshine 
tells us that he is warmed by the sun, 
we do not ask him for proofs. We can- 
not persuade him that he is not warmed, 
and that there is no sunshine. He needs 
no proofs. He knows, he feels the 
warmth of the sunshine. It is only when 
desiring to impart the joy he feels, the 
good he enjoys, to a brother sitting in 
the cold and shadow of outer darkness 
and refusing to believe that there is 
sunshine anywhere, that he thinks of 
looking about for proofs. To dispel 
this delusion from his brother's mind, 
he endeavors to lead him from the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



73 



things he already perceives to the 
things he does not yet perceive. 

I believe in the veritable resurrection 
of Jesus the Christ, in flesh and blood 
and in his continued existence among 
men on earth, — but not merely because 
the Bible tells me so. If I had no other 
evidence, no knowledge of the fact, it 
is hardly likely that I should accept as 
conclusive even the plainest unsup- 
ported declarations of the Scriptures. 
But I do believe the Bible on this point, 
because what I know otherwise tells me 
that the truth is spoken to me in and 
through it. There is no real conflict, it 
seems to me, between Religion and Sci- 
ence, — or rather between Religion and 
Nature. A religion not in harmony 
with nature cannot be true, — cannot 
be religion. Anything that is natural 
and necessary is divine. Nevertheless, 
I recognize that many minds may be 
helped into a realization of the truth 
that immortality here and now 'is the gift 
of gifts, offered to all freely and with- 
out price, out of God's infinite love, — 



74 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



that this is the glad tidings of great joy 
proclaimed in the gospel of Christ, — if 
I shall be able to point out that this an- 
nouncement is not at variance with 
Scriptural teaching; but, on the con- 
trary, that it is most plainly and 
emphatically in accordance with it. 
And, to this end, no attempt will be 
made to lead the reader through the 
mazes of any peculiar, abstruse, or 
mystical interpretation of the Bible, on 
the one hand, nor into the subtle com- 
plexities of "the higher criticism," on 
the other. Understand, it is not in- 
tended by this to convey, even by im- 
plication, a sense of disregard or depre- 
ciation of the work and teachings of 
those illuminated souls who have re- 
ceived and are giving to the world that 
larger and fuller interpretation of our 
sacred books which emphasizes the 
spirit that maketh alive, rather than the 
letter that killeth. I owe very much to 
the teaching of that great and rarely 
developed soul, Dr. Anna Kingsford; 
and, to those desirous of pursuing in- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



75 



quiry along those lines, I cannot too 
heartily commend the study of Dr. 
Kingsford's writings.* Nor can any 
one respect more sincerely than do I 
the high purpose, the fearless fidelity 
to truth, the profound scholarship and 
the pains-taking labors of those writers 
who are bringing the light of trained 
modern thought, historical research and 
analytical reasoning to bear on the 
external facts concerning the author- 
ship of those manuscripts on which the 
New Testament is based. 

It is hoped that the author's cita- 
tions of the scriptures will not lack 
weight because he deems it suffi- 
cient for present purposes to cite the 
texts simply as they appear to a plain 
man, making no pretension to biblical 
scholarship, and feeling in his heart 
that the essence of the truth taught by 
Jesus, which the Bible contains, must 
remain unaffected by the illuminated 



*"The Perfect Way, or The Finding of the Christ," by Anna 
Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland ; "Clothed With the 
Sun," by the same authors. London and New York. 



76 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



vision of larger spiritual meanings in 
the account of a Saviour born of a 
Virgin and crucified between Thieves, 
— or by the question as to whether the 
gospel of Luke was written in the first 
or the fifth century. 

Says Charles G. Ames, one of the 
preachers whose deep insight and real 
spirituality have given the Unitarian 
pulpit an influence far beyond sectar- 
ianism: 

"The Word of God — the truth, the reason, the 
wisdom, by which men and angels live — abideth for- 
ever. That Word is in the ancient books; it is in 
the modern mind; it is hidden in our hearts; it is as 
old as eternity; it is young as the morning!" 

The fact of the resurrection of Christ 
and the resurrection in him of all men is 
a truth which depends on no written or 
uttered authority, but which itself gives 
authority to those scriptures that de- 
clare it. At various periods in the his- 
tory of the Christian Church, the doc- 
trine of the resurrection has given rise 
to much controversy. Even at this day, 
it is a point on which theologians are 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 77 



divided. In the Roman, the Greek, the 
Anglican, and the American branches 
of the Catholic Church, and in the vari- 
ous evangelical Protestant Churches of 
Europe and America, it is very gener- 
ally held as an article of faith that 
Christ rose from the tomb in his body 
of flesh and bones, and that by a like — 
yet very unlike — miracle, all men will 
rise on the Judgment Day from the 
graves and in the bodies in which they 
were buried, — "Judgment Day" in this 
cennection being considered synony- 
mous with "Last Day" and "The End of 
the World." 

From its earliest history, the Chris- 
tian Church has regarded this fact of the 
physical ressurrection of Christ as the 
very foundation of its belief. "If Christ 
be not risen again," said the apostles, 
"then is our preaching vain, and vain is 
your faith." (1 Cor. xv, 14.) 

A widespread and intense discussion 
of this doctrine is in progress, as these 
pages are written. It was stirred up by 
the utterances of an eminent American 



78 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



preacher, the Rev. Dr. R. Heber New- 
ton, of New York. In an Easter sermon 
he flatly rejected the teaching of the 
Church that in the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead there was a phys- 
ical resurrection, a revivication of the 
very body of flesh and bones which had 
been nailed to the cross and laid away 
in the tomb. 

"I do believe, and believe strongly," Dr. Newton 
said, "that the record means this: That the spirit 
of Jesus, in the spiritual body, which is the house of 
the living after death, appeared to his disciples, and 
made the reality of his combined life indisputable 
to them, and thus gave them that faith, in the power 
of which they started forth to conquer the world. 

. . . . Some will ask me, what then became of 
the body? But I am too reverent to speculate about 
what became of that sacred temple of the Divine 
Spirit. I leave all such irreverent speculations to 
higher ecclesiastical authorities." 

I do not propose, here, merely to ad- 
vance citations from the Bible in con- 
firmation of the belief in Christ's resur- 
rection in the physical body, save in so 
far as it may be necessary to point out 
that if he rose in the body of flesh and 
bones, triumphant over death, and 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 79 



thereafter in that body walked and 
talked and ate and drank among men; 
if in that body he was seen and 
heard and touched with the physical 
senses; and if that body never died, — it 
is really not quite logical nor reasona- 
ble, in those who see and believe this 
much, to fail or refuse to see that the 
Son of Man lives and moves, teaches 
and works among us still. Where could 
he find greater use for an earth-born 
and earth-nurtured body of flesh and 
blood than on this earth? Why should 
he carry it to Heaven, if Heaven be some 
spiritual realm, where men have no need 
of bodies of flesh and blood, and such a 
body would be only a burden and en- 
cumbrance? If, on the contrary, 
Heaven is "within us," a state of con- 
sciousness, and not some supermundane 
place, and if this consciousness is at- 
tained through pure and absolute love, 
finding expression in ceaseless work 
with, for and in humanity, why should 
it be difficult to see that the Divine 
Man still finds good use on this earth, 



8o 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



for that "sacred temple of the Divine 
Spirit" which never saw corruption; 
why should it be difficult to see and to 
say this without "irreverent specula- 
tion," or to appeal to "higher ecclesi- 
astical authorities," or to any other au- 
thority than the sound common sense 
of the ordinary rational man? On this 
point of Christ's resurrection, it will 
help us to note here the very apposite 
comments on Dr. Newton's sermon of 
two important religious journals of New 
York. "The Churchman," edited by 
the Rev. Dr. W. H. Mallory, is, I be- 
lieve, the recognized leading and official 
organ of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in America, — the somewhat 
misleading title of the American branch 
of the English Established Church. Its 
criticism follows: 

"If Christ did not rise, how came it to pass that 
the tomb was empty, the seal broken, the stone 
rolled away? Were all the discourses of Christ dur- 
ing the great forty days merely inventions, pious 
frauds? * * * It is a greater stretch of faith to 
believe that all the apostles and the five hundred 
brethren at once, were subjects of an identical hallu- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



81 



cination that to believe in the resurrection of the 
Christian creeds. The resurrection is as much and 
as real an historical fact as the crossing of the Ber- 
esina by Napoleon, and it is just as easy to confute 
the latter as the former recorded incident in the life 
of a man." 

Even more decided is the comment 
of 'The Outlook/' edited by the Rev. 
Dr. Lyman Abbott, and which may be 
fairly considered the leading journalis- 
tic representative not only of Congrega- 
tionalism, but of all the evangelical 
churches in America from a non-secta- 
rian standpoint. 

"The difficulties in the theory which Dr. Newton 
attempts to revive, appear to us, as they have ap- 
peared to the great majority of students in all ages, 
insuperable. The theory leaves unanswered the 
question, What became of the body? It is inconsis- 
tent with the explicit declaration: 4 A spirit hath not 
flesh and bones as ye see me have.' It is difficult to 
reconcile with the eating of bread and fish by the sea 
of Galilee. It does not harmonize with the com- 
mand, 'Touch me not.' It is incongruous with the 
experience of Thomas. And it is frankly admitted 
by Dr. Newton, to be irreconcilable with the opin- 
ions and testimony of the apostles, who, he thinks, 
were mistaken, but who, if we can judge from cur- 
rent opinions at that time, would have been far more 
likely to believe in the appearance of Christ's ghost 
than in the re-appearance of his body." 



82 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



The theory of a "spiritual body" to ac- 
count for the resurrection of Jesus, is, of 
course, not a new one It has long been 
held by Spiritualists, including the Swe- 
denborgians, the Quakers and the Shak- 
ers. Dr. Newton's declaration of his 
acceptance of this theory is perhaps, in 
some degree, a result of Spiritualistic 
thought and of a taste for what is called 
psychical research. The theory itself 
was very fully stated, years ago, by Pro. 
fessor George Bush of the University of 
the City of New York, in a volume of 
essays on "The Resurrection of the 
Soul." As an argument against the doc- 
trine of the resurrection of the material 
body, he cites Jesus' words (John, v. 28) 
'All that are in their graves shall hear 
his voice and come forth." "What are 
in the graves," asks Professor Bush, "but 
the dead bodies? If this is any proof of 
the resurrection of the body, it proveth 
too much: that the dead bodies can 
hear and come forth without the 
souls; for I presume it will hardly be 
said that the souls are in the graves too 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 83 

It would also prove that the very bodies 
that were laid in the graves shall come 
forth in the same manner and form as 
when buried, whether swollen with 
dropsy or wasted by consumption." 

In another place, Bush quotes the 
text "A spirit hath not flesh and bones 
as ye see me have," interpreting it to 
have been a concession that the form in 
which Jesus appeared to the Apostles 
after the resurrection was not really 
one of flesh and bones, but only seemed 
to be such, the Greek word translated 
"see" being, not the common word for 
see (dire), but another term {Ozupur*) , 
equivalent to our consider, contemplate, 
apprehend. The quibble in this reason- 
ing becomes apparent when we remem- 
ber that Jesus' declaration here, as the 
context shows, was plainly meant to 
correct a mistake. The Apostles at first 
believed that what they saw was not 
the Master in his own proper person, 
as they had known him before the 
crucifixion, but a "spirit," a "ghost," 
a "materialization," or a "spiritual 



84 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

body/' Not only did he correct this 
erroneous impression by calling their 
attention to the very marked manner 
in which he differed from a spirit or 
ghost, as they saw him; he also afforded 
tangible evidence that he was in the 
flesh, and not merely in the spirit. 

Professor Bush's contention, like that 
of Dr. Newton, is designed to prove, 
not that it was the "mere spirit" of 
Christ which was resurrected; but the 
"spiritual body" to which Paul refers in 
saying "There is a natural body and 
there is a spiritual body." It must not 
be assumed that Paul considered it im- 
possible for a man having a natural and 
a spiritual body to be in the full posses- 
sion, exercise and enjoyment of both 
at the same time. In fact it is evident 
that he considered the natural and the 
spiritual as two aspects, or degrees of 
development, of the one body. 

" We do not refuse to acknowledge," 
Bush goes on, "the possession by angels 
of some kind of bodies; what greater 
difficulty in conceiving the same endow- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 85 



ment in regard to translated human 
beings?" 

There is, indeed, little difficulty in 
conceiving that the spirit of man, on los- 
ing the body of flesh, by the very law of 
its essential quality, — of that force or 
energy we call individuality, — instantly 
assumes form, makes another body out 
of the element in which it finds itself, 
and which element becomes at once its 
nutriment and its dwelling place. "For 
soul is form and doth the body make." 
The Swedenborgian theology certainly 
makes out a good case in reason and 
in logic, quite apart from revelation, 
for the argument that the "freed" 
spirit continues its conscious existence 
in a form whose material substance 
is of a much finer, or more etherial 
nature than is that of the physical 
body, and so is not perceptible to our 
physical senses under ordinary condi- 
tions, save in some of its effects. The 
change may be compared to that from 
the tangible and tasteable block of 
ice, turned into the invisible, intangible 



86 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



and untasteable, but very powerful 
superheated steam. As Tennyson tells 
us, in his "In Memoriam:" 

"Eternal form shall still divide 
Eternal soul from all beside." 

The difficulty would rather be to con- 
ceive of any continued individual exist- 
ence of the human soul without a form 
of some kind, — or to conceive of a 
form without material substance, al- 
though that substance may well be as 
subtle and refined as is our atmosphere. 
Out of the same material might 
be builded, conceivably, all those 
extensions of the soul and body of 
man that go to make up his habitat and 
to multiply his functions and powers. 
Existence in such a body, for a time at 
least, might be delightful in many 
ways, especially in its increased free- 
dom from the limitations of a grosser 
form and in a mobility similar, per- 
haps, to that of the electric current. 
Such bodies and such environment, 
however, may be said to bear about the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 87 



same relation to earthly and physical 
life as dream activity does to that of 
the waking hours. It is, so to speak, a 
subjective rather than an objective 
state of being. It would be attractive 
more on account of its promise than on 
account of its performance. Its delights 
would soon pall, especially for two op- 
posite classes of spirits: First, those 
of a gross and sensual nature, knowing 
and desiring life only for its selfish, 
personal pleasures on the lower material 
plane; and second, those very advanced 
spirits, for whom life and the joy of 
living, consist in high and noble accom- 
plishment, racial service, the building 
up and beautifying of man and his 
world. These two classes might come 
back into the material world after a 
short experience in the "spiritual state," 
by the open gate of re-embodiment, or 
re-incarnation, gladly resuming the 
body of flesh; the first class simply at- 
tracted back to the earthly body by its 
adaptability to sensual indulgence; the 
second class naturally drawn into re- 



88 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



birth in the flesh by appreciation of 
its higher powers and its infinite pos- 
sibilities for growth and unfoldment in 
the search for truth. 



CHAPTER NINTH. 



Scriptural Evidences of Bodily 
Immortality. 

To the author's mind, there is in the 
Scriptures, — besides the logical infer- 
ences and the inherent probabilities 
pointed out by the resurrection of Jesus 
in the body that served his will, — ex- 
plicit statement of his intention to con- 
tinue with us and complete his mission 
of redemption and at-one-ment, by giv- 
ing his glorious life with all its divine 
powers to the constant and unswerving 
service of humanity. 

Christ several times distinctly pre- 
dicted that he should rise from the dead: 

"The Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands 
of men and they shall kill him, and the third day he 
shall rise again." — Mark ix., 31. 

"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will 
raise it up." — John ii., 19. 



90 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



He surely spoke in both passages of 
his physical body. His soul could not 
be killed or destroyed, nor could his 
"spiritual body." His predictions, in 
almost every case, were accompanied 
with the promise of life to men. 

"I am come that ye might have LIFE, and that 
ye might have it more abundantly/" — John x., 10. 

"He that keepeth my sayings shall never see 
death." — John viii., 51. 

"Because I live, ye shall live also. At that day, 
ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, 
and I in you." — John xiv., 19, 20. 

"I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat 
manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the 
bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man 
may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread 
which came down from heaven: If any man eat of 
this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that 
I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life 
of the world." — John vi., 48-51. 

Here Christ clearly tells us that the 
bread which he gives us, — that bread 
which if we eat we shall live forever, — is 
his flesh, — not his "spiritual body." If 
we recognize the truth of his resurrection 
in the body, we in a very true sense 
"eat of his flesh!' That is, we absorb 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 91 



and assimilate in every drop of our 
biood, in every bone and tissue, the life- 
giving substance of a thought which 
only that divine flesh, given for the life 
of the world, has created and made 
manifest to all men for all time, — the 
very same thought which made that 
flesh in the personal body of Jesus, and 
the very same flesh in its potent thought- 
product. 

" Who is made, not after the law of a carnal com- 
mandment, but after the power of an endless life." 

— Hebrews vii., 16. 

In a sermon on this text, Chancellor 
McDowell of the University of Denver, 
has eloquently pictured the impover- 
ishmment of life due to the present reac- 
tion against the thought and the doc- 
trine of the life eternal. "We have 
narrowed our horizons and shutout the 
vision splendid/' he said. "The power 
and peace of the world to come have 
been forgotten, and life has lost its 
spring. For any complete theory of 
life requires the doctrine of the endless 
or indeterminable life, and not for the 



Q2 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



theory's sake, but for the lifes sake." 

This is certainly very true. What 
Chancellor McDowell does not see 
is that the reaction of which he com- 
plains is very largely the result of a 
lifeless teaching of immortality in our 
churches. If the power of the endless 
life is to be restored among men, it 
must be taught as more than a doctrine, 
more than a theory. It must be taught 
as a fact; a living, continuous fact. The 
Chancellor says that "Men are not saved 
by facts, but by a person. Christianity 
is a new teaching with personal power. 
The influence of Jesus begets the sense 
of an endless life." Yet nothing is more 
certain than that the influence of the 
personality of Jesus is intimately con- 
nected with the great fact that he is 
the power of endless life, demonstrat- 
ing that power in his life, in his person, 
in his flesh and blood, — and so showing 
to us, — to us who are in him, as he is in 
the Father, and the Father in him, — 
that we are indeed "made in the power 
of an endless life," and that we need 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



93 



not die and depart from the earth to 
manifest the fact. We cannot deny the 
fact, without denying the personality of 
Jesus in its essence, and so robbing the 
world of the priceless influence of that 
personality. Chancellor McDowell, in 
some measure, recognizes this in the 
closing paragraph of the sermon above 
quoted, when he 3ays: "The simple 
idea of an endless life is thrilling. It 
fills out and fills up all other ideas. 
It changes plans, quickens purposes, en- 
riches motives. But the idea is feeble 
beside the fact!' 

That noble soul, Phillips Brooks, has 
put the significance of the resurrection 
into a few beautiful lines, which may be 
quoted in this connection: 

" Here is a man, the truest, realest man (we often 
forget that about Jesus Christ, but so he was), the 
realest man that ever lived; he died, and see, he 
still lives. Then we, too, do not die in death. We 
thought so. Now we are sure of it. * * * The 
world's poor heart knows very well what it wants. 
For years and years it longed to see one man rise 
from the dead. If it could only have that! It could 
let many other questions go unanswered, but, oh, 
for some light on that darkness — oh, for some sound 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



out of that silence! If it could have that, then its 
bonds would be broken; its whole pale life flooded 
with color; its best truths verified completely, and a 
hope lighted upon every grave. * * * The 
world's prayer is answered. A true man has risen 
from the grave. Life and immortality are brought 
to light." 

That Christ's triumph over bodily 
death means our triumph over bodily 
death, is testified to by Paul in his 
eighth epistle to the Romans. 

"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, 
that we are the children of God. And if children, 
then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." 

That our redemption by Christ is a 
bodily as well as a spiritual redemption 
is perceived clearly enough throughout 
this epistle. In the eleventh verse, says 
Paul: 

" If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the 
dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from 
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by 
his spirit that dwelleth in you." 

That is, the "mortal bodies" shall be 
immortalized, the flesh spiritualized, by 
the color of your thought. Again in 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 95 



the twenty-second and twenty-third 
verses, it is written: 

"For we know that the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together until now. And not 
only them, but ourselves also, which have the first 
fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within 
ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to- wit, the re- 
demption of our body." 

If to have fuller life in the spirit is to 
have fuller life in the body in any de- 
gree, then to have the fullest, the im- 
mortal, life in the spirit is to have the 
immortal life in the body. 

The theory that all the so-called 
"miracles" of Jesus were performed 
simply to show his Godhood, is neither 
dignified nor reasonable. It would de- 
grade the Divine Man and the God in 
him to the rank of a mere conjurer, or 
wonder worker. It presupposes either 
a marked incompleteness in the plan of 
the universe and the laws by which that 
plan is wrought out, or a lack of knowl- 
edge of those laws on the part of Jesus. 

Jesus Christ is a saviour, for he has 
promulgated ideas essential to man's 



96 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



salvation. It is not claimed that he 
taught anything new in morals, all the 
precepts he uttered having formed 
parts of the codes of ethics which pre- 
ceded him. His teaching went beyond 
that of his predecessors in clear and lu- 
minous exposition of the practical appli- 
cation of ethical truth to daily life. He 
did not formulate the scientific princi- 
ples underlying his doctrines and his 
works. Had he done so, he would not 
have been understood. The world was 
not then ready to receive them. He 
stated facts, and then went ahead and 
practiced what he preached. The world 
could understand that the blind were 
made to see, the deaf to hear, the lame 
to walk, the sick healed, and the dead 
brought to life. The time was not ripe 
for them to understand how these things 
were done. 

Jesus claimed no exclusive Godhood 
in doing these works; but explicitly 
charged his disciples to continue his 
work, teaching them the true method 
of healing, and left the power to heal to 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 97 



all who should come after him, possess- 
ing the requisite faith. He even prophe- 
cied that they should be able to exceed 
his achievements in this direction. 
"Greater than these works shall ye do." 

"All things are possible to him that 
believeth." (Mark, ix., 23.) Faith is 
the one condition Jesus always insisted 
upon. Springing from his consciousness 
of oneness with The All, and his absolute 
faith in all that oneness involved, he 
attained, in an exceptional degree, the 
power to perceive the operations of the 
spiritual world — the workings of the 
unseen potency of Eternal Life behind 
the veil of the seen. It was this power 
which enabled Christ to define the 
whole law of mental therapeutics, as it 
has been demonstrated nineteen hun- 
dred years later by scientific investiga- 
tion. 

"Verily, verily, I say unto you that he 
that believeth on me hath everlasting 
life." (John vi., 47.) In these words, 
Jesus announced a scientific principle of 
the utmost importance. Belief is essen- 



98 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



tial to the attainment of immortality 
(in or out of the body) . Belief in what? 
Belief in immortality — a state of con- 
sciousness of the fact of immortality. 
Belief in Jesus, in any real sense, is 
belief in the immortality of man. It is a 
belief in him who is "the way, the truth 
and the life," — in body and soul to- 
gether; and with belief, a realization of 
oneness with him. 

I suppose it will be admitted that a 
man can be just as dead in three days 
as he can in three thousand years. In a 
photograph of the mummied Rameses 
II., (the Pharaoh of the Bible), that an- 
cient potentate looks almost as much 
alive as do some of the people we meet 
in the streets every day. Jesus proved 
that he who believed in the resurrection 
and the life, could rise from the grave, 
even though he had been dead thirty- 
six hours. If you can believe on him, 
though you were dead three thousand 
years, "yet shall you live." "And whoso- 
ever liveth and believeth in me shall 
never die." 



THE LIVING CHRIS1. 99 



The following are a few further texts', 
which, simply and rightly interpreted, 
must confirm the position here advanced: 

"When this corruptible shall have put on incor- 
ruption and this mortal shall have put on immortal- 
ity." — I. Cor. xv., 54. 

"And behold, I am with you always, even to the 
end of the world." — Mathew xxviii., 20. 

"As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by 
the Father; so he that eateth me, the same shall live 
by me. This is the bread that came down from 
heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna and are 
dead. He that eateth this manna shall live forever." 

—John vi., 57, 58. 

"If any man keep my word, he shall not see death 
forever." — John viii., 46. 

"A little while, and now you shall not see me; and 
again a little while, and you shall see me." 

— John xvi., 16. 

"Verily I say unto you, There be some standing 
here which shall not taste of death till they see the 
Son of Man coming in his kingdom." 

— Mathew xvi., 28. 
"And all flesh shall see the salvation of God." 

— Luke iii., 6. 

"And I, if I be lifted up from thfc earth, will draw 
all men unto me." — John xii., 32. 

"Because I live, ye shall live also. At that day, 
ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in 
me, and I in you." — John xiv., 19, 20. 



100 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



"For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all 
be made alive." — I. Cor. xv., 22. 

"For He must reign until he hath put all enemies 
under his feet. The last enemy that shall be de- 
stroyed is death." — I. Cor. xv., 25, 26. 

"And the servant abideth not in the house forever, 
but the son abideth." — John viii., 35. 

"I lay down my life that I might take it again. 
No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of my- 
self. I have power to lay it down and I have power 
to take it again." — John x., 17, 18. 

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and 
they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life, 
and they shall never perish." — John x., 27, 28. 

That Christ's power over death was 
the power to overcome the manifesta- 
tion of death in the physical body, 
(which, after all, is in a manner a re- 
flection of or correspondence to a de- 
gree of death in the soul of man) , was 
demonstrated by Jesus before his cruci- 
fixion in the so-called "miracles" of the 
raising of Lazarus, whom he loved; 
(Luke, xvi.,31) ; of the daughter of Jai- 
rus, for that Jairus had faith, (Matthew, 
ix., 18-26) ; of the young man in Nain, 
for that Jesus had compassion on the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. IOI 



widowed mother, (Luke vii., 11-16). 
In fact, it will, I think, require but little 
candid thought and reasoning to per- 
ceive that all Christ's miracles, — his 
healing of the leprous and the sick, his 
giving sight to the blind, hearing to the 
deaf and wholeness and soundness of 
limb to the crippled, were of the same 
nature as that manifested in this final 
"miracle" of raising the dead to life, — 
the same, too, in power as was shown in 
his changing the water into wine at the 
wedding in Canaa, in his multiplication 
of the loaves and fishes in the desert, 
and in his walking on the waves. It 
was the exercise of his consciousness 
of the command and control of mind 
over matter, of the highest form of or- 
ganized life over all other forms, or- 
ganized or unorganized, of the positive 
over the negative, of the God in him 
over all things dependent on and exist- 
ing only by the will of God. 



CHAPTER TENTH 



Scriptural Evidences of Bodily 
Immortality — Continued. 

Briefly reviewing the texts quoted in 
the preceding chapter, with even the 
possibility of the immortalization of the 
human body granted, we shall see if the 
words interpreted in their plain mean- 
ing, as a little child, or a rational man 
unblinded by the mists of theological 
polemics, would interpret them, do not 
seem clearer, more definite and more 
exact in this sense than in any other. 
That is to say, if the words can be con- 
strued into any other meaning without 
straining them from the meaning that 
would be intended by a plain man 
speaking to plain people. Are not 
other meanings arrived at by assuming 
that the words should be taken not 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 103 



literally, but figuratively, or allegorical- 
ly, that, in fact, on this most vital of all 
points, Jesus and the Apostles said one 
thing when they meant quite another? 

"This mortality/' Paul said should 
put on immortality. By "this" mortal- 
ity he did not mean a part or a princi- 
ple of his nature already immortal, the 
God, or soul, or spirit. What could he 
have meant except that the man, the 
mortal, the human, in the body of flesh, 
until then mortal and corruptible, be- 
cause he had not grown into conscious- 
ness of his immortality and incorrup- 
tion, — that this man "put on" incorrup- 
tion and immortality? Note particu- 
larly the words "put on." He does not 
say that he must "shuffle off" this mor- 
tal coil; but upon it as garment, or 
rather as structure upon foundation, 
shall be put immortality. Mortality and 
corruption are not consciously put off, 
not simply lost, but brought into sub- 
jection. Coming into the power to live, 
through thinking and living the truth* 
man still has power to die, so far as his 



104 THE LIVING CHRIST, 



body is concerned. Death is conquered 
not annihilated. 

"All way" and "the world" seem to 
me, in the light that has come, to be 
plainly terms, applicable to this life and 
this earth. "With us," certainly does 
not mean away from us, away from 
men, away from the world. The Teacher 
who declared that the kingdom of 
heaven is within every man, must smile 
compassionately on the Church's an- 
nual celebration of the feast of the As- 
cension, — a feast in commemoration 
of his rising up bodily through the ter- 
restrial atmosphere, into some region 
beyond the clouds and beyond sight 
and touch of man! Christ nowhere, that 
I have been able to find, said anything 
about such a journey as that, or about 
leaving the earth. 

Christ's human existence on this 
earth offers the only reasonable recon- 
ciliation of what otherwise would be a 
contradiction between his statement in 
Matthew xxviii., 20, and that in John 
xvi., 16. He went away from the im- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 05 

mediate presence of his friends for "a 
little while" (to him a thousand years 
are but as a day, and a day as a thou- 
sand years) , but even at that time the 
world was large enough for a man to 
go away from the immediate sight or 
hearing or even knowledge, of his 
friends, in Palestine, without going to 
any super-terrestial place. 

Jesus frequently spoke of the word of 
truth as the bread of life, as the stay 
and substance of the immortal life — and 
consequently of the present life — in a 
far larger sense than physical bread is 
the substance of that life. The death 
of the "fathers" who ate of the manna 
that fell in the wilderness was physical 
death. He contrasts the littleness of 
the sustaining power of that manna, 
thus exemplified, with the perpetual 
life attained by existence in the 
consciousness of oneness with Eternal 
Life. If we do not accept this construc- 
tion, the text must be understood as 
meaning that the Israelites who ate the 
manna, are dead spiritually, as well as 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



bodily. If the words "are dead" here 
mean simply that, for them, life in the 
body came to an end, then the contrast 
with this fact to be demonstrated by 
him that eateth of the truth, which is 
the life of Jesus, is that he "shall never 
die" in the body. This construction 
also appears to be the clear and mani- 
fest meaning of the text cited from the 
eighth chapter of John. The second 
quotation from this chapter points the 
way to eternal life. It is not as servant, 
but as son of God that man abideth 
forever in the house not built with 
hands. The same truth is beautifully 
told in an old story from Sufi which 
may well be repeated here: 

"There was a man, who for seven years, did every 
act of charity, and at the end of the seven years he 
mounted the steps to the gate of Heaven and 
knocked. A voice cried, Who is there?' 'Thy ser- 
vant, O Lord!' And the gate was shut. Seven other 
years he did every other good work, and again 
mounted the three steps to Heaven and knocked. 
The voice cried, 'Who is there?* He answered, 'Thy 
slave, O God/ and the gates were shut. Seven other 
years he did every good deed and again mounted the 
steps to Heaven, and the voice said, 'Who is there? 1 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



I07 



He replied, Thyself, O God/ and the gates wide 
open flew." 

Is it rational (granting the possibility 
of the truth here declared,) to suppose 
that Jesus meant anything else than the 
life which is; that life which, in the 
verse quoted, he says he will lay down? 
If the life to be taken up is quite another 
order of life, why should he say "I lay 
it down"? To me it seems that there 
can be no mistaking his intention to 
assert that the life he has the power to 
take up is the very same life he had 
power to lay down, and did lay down — 
the life he was manifesting in flesh and 
bones at the time he spoke. 

The crowning and complete citation, 
the scripture on which, so far as the 
scriptures are concerned, the truth here 
proclaimed may well rest, is to be found 
in John xi., 25, 26: 

/ am the resurrection and the life: he 
that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth 
and believeth in me shall never die. 

If the words here used by Christ were 



io8 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



not sufficiently clear in themselves, the 
circumstances under which they were 
spoken seem to me to leave no doubt of 
his meaning. It must be remembered 
that in the preceding two verses, Jesus 
had said to Martha, "Thy brother shall 
rise again." And when she answered, "I 
know that he shall rise again in the 
resurrection at the last day" — precisely 
the same mistake that the Christian 
Church has perpetuated to this day — 
he at once corrected her by the plain, 
distinct declaration above quoted. Here 
was no parable, no allegory, no myth, 
no double meaning; but the plain an- 
swer to a plain question of a plain man 
to a plain woman. Jesus loved Lazarus; 
he wept for him, he was one with him, 
as with all men. His bringing Lazarus 
to life was truly bringing himself to 
life. But it was necessary that he 
should die in his own person to show us 
that it is not enough to have a kind and 
loving saviour raise us from the dead. 
Every man must work out his own sal- 
vation, in the light of Christ's teaching 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 109 



and example, by coming, through life 
and work in love, into the same one- 
ness with the Father by which Jesus 
gained Eternal Life. Martha's faith 
added to that of the disembodied La- 
zarus, fulfilled the conditions of the 
resurrection. 

It is important to note here how care- 
fully the Master guards against the 
very natural conclusion that might be 
drawn from his restoring the dead body 
of Lazarus to life and his laying down 
of his own life. It might easily be sup- 
posed, if this were all, that death is 
necessary to the gaining of eternal life. 
Here, however, it plainly appears that 
not only shall he that believeth in Christ 
live, even thotigh he were dead, that is, 
not because, but in spite of his death, — 
but, and this is the larger statement of 
the larger truth, — "whosoever livetk 
and believeth shall never die." 

To say that Jesus in these words meant 
that those who believe in him shall 
die in the flesh, but live forever in a 
"spiritual body," in some distant 



IIO THE LIVING CHRIST. 



spiritual sphere; or that he referred to 
his own personal resurrection only, or 
to that of Lazarus only, is to accuse 
the Divine Man of prevaricating, of 
twisting words from their plain mean- 
ing, of paltering with the truth and wil- 
fully deceiving Martha to whom the 
words were addressed; it is to say that 
Jesus lied. This was the one thing 
which it seems very certain Jesus did 
not do, at least in his public ministry. 
It is the one sin which stirred him to 
depths of scorn and condemnation. For 
publicans and sinners and prostitutes, 
for the woman taken in adultery, for the 
thief on the cross, for his own persecu- 
tors and murderers, he had only love 
and pity; but for liars and hypocrites he 
had bitterest denunciation and the 
scourge. Let this be borne in mind in 
reading the text. He used words which 
were understood by Martha to mean 
that not only her brother, but "whoso- 
ever believed/' should live, even though 
his body had been placed in the grave, 
and that whosoever liveth and believeth 



THE LIVING CHRIST. Ill 



"shall never die," as her brother had 
died. 

Coming from the preceding to the 
succeeding circumstances, we find that 
Jesus, as if to make sure that there 
should be to all men, in all future time, 
no uncertainty as to the plain meaning 
of these plain words," 'called Lazarus out 
of his grave and raised him from the 
dead' 1 (John, xii., 17.) Would he have 
done this deed, if he had been talking 
about a life apart from that of the phy- 
sical body? 

How many millions of men and 
women have died imagining, honestly 
enough, that they believed in Christ? 
Yet if they really believed, not in the 
mere personality of the man, but in 
the truth which he came into the world 
to be a witness to, they would have mani- 
fested their deathlessness in immortal- 
ized bodies. Of the millions of profess- 
ing Christians in the world to-day, how 
many are ready to come into eternal 
life through the gate of immortalization, 
rather than through the gates of death 



112 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



and rebirth ? This truth of man's inher- 
ent immortality, — of his invincible pow- 
er over death, — is truly that light which 
shineth in the darkness, "and the dark- 
ness comprehendeth it not." No mind 
can comprehend and assimilate a fact, 
while the very fiber of that mind is for- 
eign to the fact. We cannot see red 
through blue glasses. If we are to make 
the truth our very own, we must bring 
ourselves into harmony with it; must be 
truth. The darkness in us cannot see 
and comprehend the light. It will even 
deny the existence of the light. If we 
are to comprehend the light, we must 
begin by relegating the darkness in us 
to its proper place as a mere negation; 
nothing, save as it is the underside, the 
shadow of something. The shadow only 
proves the existence of the tree. To 
elevate disease and death into real and 
positive powers ; is to imitate the child or 
the savage, for whom darkness is a very 
real and tangible terror. 

Man, mentally and physically, is a 
mixture of light and darkness. JHe may 




( 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 13 

open or he may close the windows of 
his soul. Sooner or later, of course, 
"the Light that lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world" must make its 
way through even the closed doors and 
windows of man's earthly tabernacle, 
transforming by slow and sure degrees 
the darkness of materiality into the 
light of spirituality. Whether it shall be 
sooner or later depends on the man 
himself; depends above all upon the dis- 
position of the individual. That disposi- 
tion or tendency is in turn determined 
by the man's life; by every thought, 
word and deed. "They who live the 
life shall know the doctrine;" "He who 
doeth the will of the Father shall know 
the teaching." In proportion to the 
clarity, the purity, the light, the truth 
of his thoughts, words and deeds, must 
be the transparency of that house of 
flesh through which the light must come. 

In a sense far more real, rational 
and more scientific than is the the- 
ological sense,— man at the "Judgment 
Day" — and every day is a judgment 



1 14 > THE LIVING CHRIST. 

day — must answer for every idle word 
his tongue may speak. The record is 
made in his flesh, and follows the word 
inevitably. 

Pilate's question, " What is truth?" 
will perhaps here suggest itself to some. 
I shall not pretend to answer for any 
other. If I could answer, there would 
be no need to answer. One can tell 
what is truth to one's self, and this may 
help another to decide what is truth for 
himself; but "What is truth ?" is indeed 
a question which every man must ulti- 
mately answer for himself. The lack 
of agreement among men on the an- 
swer will not absolve any man from the 
duty of seeking the truth for himself 
freely, fairly and fearlessly. It will not 
avail him to seek to shield himself 
behind the dogmas or decrees of indi- 
viduals or institutions, on the one hand, 
nor behind denials and uncertainty on 
the other. Perhaps as safe and simple 
a rule as any is that indicated in Chan- 
ning's aphorism: "Uprightness of 
thought is more important than that 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 115 



the thought be right." A blind fanati- 
cism is inconsistent with truth, as it is 
inconsistent with love, — and it is difficult 
to see how it can be entirely honest. 
No man can be very certain of a truth 
which he fears to hear discussed. There 
is certainly more virtue in honest unbe- 
lief, or even in honest belief in a lie, 
than there is in dishonest pretense of 
belief in the sublimest truth, — just as 
the avowed publican and sinner is really 
a more honest man than the hypocri- 
tical Pharisee. 

"For as in Adam all die, so in Christ 
all are made to live," is in a literal, as 
well as in a mystical sense, an exact 
statement of what happens to the re- 
deemed soul. Death is a consequence 
of the soul's immersion in materiality; 
in the phenomena rather than the sub- 
stance, in the shadow rather than the 
reality. The blindness and darkness of 
this condition must be dispelled before 
the Divine Light can enter into a soul. 
Paul indicates figuratively this spiritual 
evolution when he says, "He is at first \ 



Il6 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



Adam, a living soul. He is at last, Christ, 
a life giving spirit." Or, as the text has 
been well interpreted, man, being first 
a soul having derived life, comes at last 
to be a spirit that is itself Divine Life. 

In Christ's triumph over death, and 
in our present recognition of the true 
meaning of that triumph for all hu- 
manity, the world is already beginning 
to see fulfillment of that prophecy in 
John's sublime vision of the coming 
time. 

"The tabernacle of God shall be with men and He 
will dwell with them and they shall be His people, 
and God Himself shall be with them and be their 
God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sor- 
row nor crying; neither shall there be any more 
pain; for the former things are passed away." 



CHAPTER ELEVENTH. 



Indications of Man's Deathlessness in 
Nature — Death Not Inherent 
in Living Matter. 

"There is no death! What seems so 
is transition." This is the poet's state- 
ment of a scientific truth in regard to 
the life of man, and in regard to every 
atom in the universe. In the words of 
Dr. Ludwig Buechner: "The great mys- 
tery of existence consists in perpetual 
and uninterrupted change. Everything 
is immortal and indestructible — the 
smallest worm, as well as the most enor- 
mous of the celestial bodies, — the sand- 
grain or the water-drop, as well as the 
highest being in creation, man and his 
thoughts. Only the forms in which 
Being manifests itself are changing; but 



Il8 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



Being itself remains eternally the same 
and imperishable/' 

It is life that is everywhere and al- 
ways the supreme law, in regard to the 
world as a whole, and in greater and 
greater degree as regards each differ- 
entiated form of life in its progress 
from the simple to the complex. Death 
is the negative side of life — its lowest 
degree, — it has only such power and 
place as life will allow it. It is only 
conceivable as a negative, not a posi- 
tive, fact, — as the absence of that par- 
ticular manifestation of life with which 
we are most familiar. 

The seemingly inexhaustible mani- 
festations of life seen on every hand, 
in all of nature's countless phases, is a 
marvel which casts into the shade even 
the appearances men call death. The 
persistence of life, its universality, its 
indestructibility, its fruitfulness and its 
pervasiveness, are much more evident 
and much more important, more posi- 
tive and absolute facts, than are the 
negative phenomena of death; that 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 119 



negation which has so long abnormally 
engaged the mind of man and blinded 
his eyes to the larger truth. As Young 
says: "Man makes a death which na- 
ture never made." 

If, according to Bishop Berkeley's 
clear interpretation of the Christian 
teaching that God is everywhere, "There 
is in all the universe but one substance 
and that substance is spirit ;" if, accord- 
ing to the Hindu philosophy, all forms 
of life are but the outward variations 
of the one all-contained, all-containing 
and eternal life of Parabrahm; if, ac- 
cording to modern science, the visible 
universe is filled and permeated in every 
atom by one universal and indestructi- 
ble substance — if we accept any or all of 
these three statements of the one truth, 
— and to the modern mind the last is 
undeniable, — why should man die? When 
fully conscious of the composition of 
his body out of this immortal substance, 
how can he die? 

I asked the question of a materialist 
turned Theosophist — a learned and able 



120 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



teacher. The answer came promptly: 
"Because he dies. A fact is its own 
proof. Science does not ask why a fact 
is a fact. If it is, it is." 

It will be perceived that this was 
really not an answer to my question. I 
did not ask why men have died, nor why 
men do die; but why men should die. 
The assumption of my friend the ma- 
terialist, is not only that no man has 
yet conquered death; but also that what 
has been and what is shall always be. 
This assumption is disproved every 
day in the familiar experience of 
men, especially in those applications of 
the expanding knowledge of modern 
science that have, during the last fifty 
years, reduced the mortality and in- 
creased the average length of life in all 
civilized lands. 

The religionist, whether Eastern or 
Western, gives no more satisfactory an- 
swer. In fact, as a rule, he evades the 
plain question, by declaring that man 
does not die — that he merely puts off 
a poor, worn out earthly garment to don 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



121 



celestial robes — forgetting what Paul 
says about "the temple of the living 
God:' 

But all material scientists are not 
satisfied with mere assertion. 

A recent writer in the " Saturday Re- 
view," discussing the phenomenon of 
death from a purely scientific standpoint, 
arrives at a conclusion which will no 
doubt startle many people. He says 
distinctly that "death is not inherent in 
living matter;'" that conceiving" the na- 
ture of death from our knowledge of it 
in man and the higher animals, "we 
conceive it erroneously." I must be per- 
mitted to quote this writer's statement 
of fact and theory at some length and 
for a purpose better than he knew; but 
I shall do this, feeling that the evidence 
of a modern scientist, — himself not 
clearly seeing where his testimony and 
reasoning lead, — will, at this time and 
with many people, have more weight 
than might be accorded to the writings 
of ancient or modern mystics, so- 
called. The writer, in the course of 



122 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



his article in the "Saturday Review," 
goes on to say: 

"With the higher animals, what we call death is a 
cessation of the gross functions of the body. . 
Death has come by one of the atria mortis, the three 
gates; by failure of the heart, or the lungs, or the 
brain, the mechanism has broken down and stops 
suddenly and visibly. Even in old age, when there 
has been a slow degeneration of all the organs, the 
final arrest of their functions comes sharply, at a 
particular moment. . . . It is not until long af- 
ter the moment at which it seems to us that the spir- 
it has left the body that the tissues are dead. For 
hours afterward the skin remains alive, the hair 
grows, the muscles respond to electrical stimula- 
tion The body of a man is a highly in- 
tegrated structure; each organ has a communion so 
intimate with every other that failure of any part is 
reflected upon the whole. . . . . In this we have 
to distinguish two things: what we call death — the 
sudden arrest that is an accident of the complex har- 
mony of the body, as when a steamship is stopped 
in mid-ocean by the rupture of a valve — and the 
actual death of the living protoplasm of the cells and 
tissues. 

"In the descending scale of animal life, the rela- 
tions between the organs are less and less intimate, 
and the misleading suddenness of the arrest of their 

machinery fades away Who shall name 

the point of death of an oyster or of a sea-anemone? 
. . . . In the simplest animals of all, — organisms 
that consist each of a single cell, — death may be seen 
at its lowest terms. There is no composite multicel- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



123 



hilar body, no bodily mechanism to break down, no 
possibility of the failure of one set of cells gradually 
creeping upon others. Each organism is alive or 
dead as its protoplasm is alive or dead. Here, in 
their simplest forms, are life and death; . . . . 
violence of heat and cold, mechanical forces and the 
assaults of chemical affinities may destroy these sin- 
gle particles; but if not overthrown by rude acci- 
dent, and if provided with food and drink, their 
protoplasm lives forever. . . . So far as reason 
and observation can inform us, the living particles 
in the ponds and seas of to-day have descended in a 
direct continuity of living material from the first 
dawn of life. No other solution is open, save a 
spontaneous generation of living matter so contin- 
ual and so common that it could not have eluded the 
search of science. This is that 'immortality of the 
protozoa* hinted at by Lankester in England, bla- 
zoned into fame by Weissmann. 

''Whether or not the tissues of higher organisms 
be potentially immortal can be only a matter of in- 
ference. The reproductive cells, indeed, form a liv- 
ing chain binding the animals and plants of the 
present with the animals and plants of the remotest 
past. This reproductive protoplasm is immortal, in 
precisely the same sense as the protoplasm of single 
cells is immortal, and there seems no reason to be- 
lieve with Weissman that the protoplasm of the oth- 
er tissues has acquired mortality, and is different in 
kind. It dies, but only because it is part of a com- 
plex structure. The machinery of the body is not 

regulated to last forever There is no 

reason to suppose the protoplasm itself grows old. 



124 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



A slip cut from a tree many centuries old, may be 
grafted on a young tree, and so enter on a new lease 
of life. Were the process to be continued, a con- 
tinuity of protoplasmic life might be maintained. So 
far as we can tell, death is not inherent in living 
matter. Photoplasm may live forever, as a flame 
shielded from the wind and fed from an endless 
store would burn forever/' 

Even if we admit it to be true that 
the protoplasm of human tissues dies 
now because, being part of a complex 
structure it is dependent on the orderly 
and harmonious health and activity of 
that structure in its every part, — surely 
it will not be contended that this condi- 
tion makes death inevitable, — z. e.> that 
this orderly and harmonious relation is 
impossible. If this were the case, these 
tissues could never be alive at all! Still 
more, how is it that, in the'interrela- 
tion of these cells in that highly devel- 
oped organism, the body of man, they 
enjoy not only life, but a much higher 
order of life than they enjoyed as unor- 
ganized protoplasm, — an order and in- 
tensity, a consciousness, fullness and 
joy of living, beside which the life 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 125 



of "the immortal protozoa" is death 
indeed? 

The statement that "the machinery 
of the body is not regulated to last for- 
ever/' is found on close analysis to be 
unfounded. It is therefore misleading. 
On what fact is the assertion based? It 
is not enough to say that people die, 
that most people die, or even that all 
the people of past ages, so far as we know, 
have died. Unless it can be shown that 
they died because death is inherent in 
man, in his substsnce and structure, 
then these people died only because 
they knew no better; they died for the 
same reason that our forefathers dwelt 
in caves and ate each other. Science 
will hardly advance as a serious argu- 
ment for (or against) any statement of 
fact, that our grandfathers did not re- 
cognize it, or believe in it, or live ac- 
cording to it. 

This Saturday Reviewer deems the 
triumph of matter over death, which he 
points out, as " barren in the sense that 
affects us most, because . . • it is 



126 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



the individual life that appeals to our 
emotions, individual death that broods 
over our joys." 

In what does the individual life con- 
sist, if not in the life of every one of the 
millions of cells composing the indi- 
dual's body? Would it be maintained 
that every atom of the substance com- 
posing man's organism is immortal in 
its nature and may live forever, "as a 
flame shielded from the wind and fed 
from an endless store" (a very apt and 
and beautiful illustration of just what 
the living body of a spiritually self-con- 
scious man really is) , but that the man, 
or the organism of the man composed of 
this undying stuff, is doomed to death, 
and so doomed by the very evolution 
which has given it greater life — which 
has made of this stuff something that is 
much more than a mere aggregation of 
immortal cells? In other words, does 
organization of structure, as it increases 
in complexity and consequently in de- 
velopment and power, cause that which 
in itself is immortal to become mortal? 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 27 



The question answers itself. Progress 
means life, and life more abundantly, 
always. 

Plainly, on this writers own showing, 
the failure of function, the "break-down 
of the machinery," is not to be traced 
to any inevitableness of death inherent 
in the nature of the vital organs, as they 
are rightly called. On the contrary, 
the cells composing heart, lungs and 
brain, like those composing the other 
tissues of the body, have an inherent 
life capable of constant and infinite re- 
newal, and, like the simpler protoplasm, 
may live forever, — and will live as long 
as they are free to exercise their func- 
tions, — as long as nutrition, use and re- 
production is allowed to continue, and 
the organs are not starved nor stinted, 
not overworked, nor underworked. The 
life and health of the organs them- 
selves are bound up in the maintenance 
of the life, health, and organized ac- 
tivity of the cells composing them, as 
the life of the body as a whole is con- 
ditioned on the orderly nutrition and 



128 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



activity of all the cells and organs, — and 
just as the life of the racial man (a still 
higher and more complex organism, 
whose immortality even material science 
admits) , is dependent for its fullest ex- 
pression and development, on the 
healthy nutrition and orderly activity 
of all the units composing it. 

It is said that "the machinery of the 
body is not regulated to last forever!' 
Is it regulated to last at all? If so, for 
how long? Some people die in infancy, 
some in childhood, some in youth, some 
in middle life and a comparitively small 
proportion in what is called "old age," 
but what would seem only the morning 
of life to those patriarchs, "whose age 
was as the tree's." Would it be said that 
the machinery, speaking generally, is re- 
gulated to run one year, or ten, or thirty, 
or seventy? Can any scientist say that 
there is anything inherent in the com- 
position and construction of the human 
body compelling decay, break-down, and 
death in consequence of years, when 
a Gladstone or a Bismarck, a Goethe or 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 29 



a Tennyson manifests full bodily and 
mental vigor at an age when most men 
and women are in their graves? 

Is it not unreasonable to assume 
that the crowning creation of the Infin- 
ite Mind, — this mechanism to which all 
the forms and forces of all the universe 
from the beginning of time have con- 
tributed their best, — must run down in 
a paltry sixty or seventy years ? Man 
himself has been able to contrive a 
piece of mechanism made of bits of 
wood and metal that will do better than 
that. We are told that Herr A. Noll, 
of Berlin, has invented a clock that will 
run ten thousand years without being 
wound up after it is once set going! 



CHAPTER TWELFTH. 



The Scientific Argument Continued — 
Lessons of Longevity — What 
is Time? 

In spite of the race belief in the 
"scriptural span" fetich, — in spite of in- 
herited thought tendencies to manifest 
the negations of decay and death, — 
many men and women, even in our own 
time, have defied death for a period far 
beyond three score and ten and proved 
that death is not inevitable, even at one 
hundred years of age. Charles Dudley 
Warner tells us in an article in Harper s 
Magazine that there are well authenti- 
cated cases of mission Indians in South- 
ern California who reached the ages of 
1 20, 130 and 140 years. Lieutenant 
Gibbons found in a village in Peru one 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



hundred persons over the age of 100, 
and one man aged 140. In the high- 
lands of South and Central America, 
the habit of old age is a long estab- 
lished one. In Ecuador, centenarians 
are common. At Teluca, in Mexico, 
where the register is officially and care- 
fully kept, there died only a few j r ears 
ago, a man aged one hundred and 
ninety-two years. 

The Countess of Desmond lived to 
be 145, and died in the reign of James 
I. This wonderful woman found her- 
self, at the age of 100, so lively and 
strong as to be able to take part in a 
dance, and when she was 140 she trav- 
eled all the way from Bristol to London 
— no trifling journey in those days — in 
order to attend personally to some 
business affairs. Lady Desmond is, 
however, quite thrown into the shade 
by a French woman, Marie Prion, who 
died in St. Colombe, in June, 1838, at 
the wonderful age of 158, having re- 
tained all her mental faculties to the 
end. It is a remarkable but incontestable 



132 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



fact that some women, at the age when 
most people die, undergo a sort of na- 
tural process of rejuvenation — hair 
and teeth grow again, the wrinkles dis- 
appear from the skin, and sight and hear- 
ing reacquire their former sharpness. A 
Marquise de Mirabeau died at the age 
of 86, but a few years before her death 
she became in appearance quite young 
again. The same change happened to 
a nun, Marguerite Virdur, who, at the 
age of 62, lost her wrinkles, regained 
her sight, and grew several new teeth. 
When she died, ten years later, her ap- 
pearance was almost juvenile. 

When Thomas Parr, the famous Eng- 
lish centenarian, died in his 152nd 
year, it was found that his vital organs 
were in so perfect a condition that he 
might have lived much longer, if he 
had remained in his country home, in- 
stead of journeying to London to be 
shown to the King, and thus subjected 
to a complete change of diet and much 
undue excitement. Thirty-eight centen- 
arians were recorded among the deaths 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 133 



in Great Britain during the year 1895, fif- 
teen men and twenty-three women. The 
oldest was Mrs. Henry of Gortree, who 
died at 112, leaving a daughter of nine. 
In the last ten years, the St. James Ga- 
zette has kept track of 378 centenari- 
ans, of whom 143 were men and 235 
women. 

Yet in the absence of an intelligent 
recognition of this great fact of man's 
immortalization in the flesh, the assump- 
tion that "the machinery of the body is 
not regulated to last forever;" that, in 
fact, it is regulated to break down, or 
"run down," in a hundred years or less, 
need not seem a very wild one. A 
great many people live, and live a long 
time, — which fact by itself would seem 
to argue that life is the normal condi- 
tion of man; but until Christ came to 
be a witness to the truth, as many men 
as lived also died. Does this prove 
that death is the normal condition? We 
have illogically and unhappily been led 
to just that conclusion. We have based 
our thought and action upon it, giving 



134 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



to selfishness, greed, avarice, vanity, and 
all the other vices of the time, a place 
which they never could have reached 
in the thought and life of immortal be- 
ings recognizing their immortality . Shall 
we not rather argue that since men both 
live and die, and live for longer or 
shorter periods, that man is free to live, 
orlo die; and that if the machinery may 
be regulated by himself to last for a day, 
it may be regulated to last forever? 

Perhaps it will be urged that, as many 
men, not otherwise ailing, die simply 
from decay or failure of the vital 
organs, which failure seems in so 
many cases to be a " natural " accom- 
paniment of accumulated years, there 
must be a maximum oj time, beyond 
which the machinery will not and does 
not work. To this it may be answered 
that "old age" is itself a disease or dis- 
order, created, like all health and dis- 
ease, or other conditions good or bad, 
by the thinking and the doing, or the 
not thinking and not doing of the man; 
— by his use or disuse of the great mo- 



THE LIVING CHRlbl. 



135 



tor power entrusted to him to use to his 
utmost ability. The French medical 
records tell us of a case where a boy at 
six years of age had attained the 
stature of manhood, with a full beard; 
and who at sixteen, — toothless, white- 
bearded, bald-headed and bent, — died of 
what had every appearance of old age. 

In every-day life, we are familiar with 
the fact that some men and women "age" 
much sooner than others. The working 
classes as a whole, — and especially the 
coal miner, the foundry man, and the 
factory operative, — become as "old" in 
appearance and weakness at 40 or 45, as 
do people of better nurture and easier, 
more varied and wholesome life only af- 
ter passing 65 or 70. Man shows death, 
instead of life, with increasing years, sim- 
ply because, in his thought, increase of 
years is associated with weakness and 
death, — and this association of ideas, this 
thinking, governs his doing and his not 
doing. In disuse of brain and heart and 
lungs and muscles and nerves, he thinks 
and acts decay, disease, death. Life 



136 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



would not be life, were this not possible 
to him. Precisely the same power in man 
which permits him, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, to choose death and the way of 
death, allows him to choose life and the 
way of life; — to seek the light as he seeks 
the shadow, — and, wherever he seeks with 
his whole heart, to find the light. 

Even without a recognition of his 
oneness with the Infinite and Eternal 
Life, who is the same yesterday, to-day 
and forever, — and his consequent su- 
premacy over all change and condition, 
— it would, I think, be extremely diffi- 
cult to prove scientifically, that the cor- 
poreal structure of man, being like the 
protozoa, in its very nature immortal, 
should decay and die, because the earth 
has turned on its axis, or revolved 
around the sun, a greater or less number 
of times. The only effect on man of 
this movement of the planet should be 
larger and fuller life to the man, as to 
the planet. This is what it is to man 
racially, and when man individually 
recognizes his oneness with man racial- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



137 



ly, he will not hold himself as lower 
than the racial man. 

// ts always noonday. Philosophically, 
time has no existence. It is purely an 
abstract conception. Differences of time 
are incidents of longitude affecting ap- 
pearances, not realities. Herbert Spen- 
cer defines time as "the blank form of 
all succession and co-existence." There- 
fore, there are no days and nights, no 
months and years, — save as we have 
formed for our convenience an abstract 
conception called time and its divisions, 
by imagining eternity to be reeled off, 
or reeled on, to something synchron- 
ously with the motion, or imagined mo- 
tion, of a body in what we call "space." 

The man who lives in realities, rather 
than in appearances or illusionary ab- 
stractions, does consciously what the 
protozoa does unconsciously. Disre- 
garding the movement of pendulum 
or planet, except in so far as it may 
serve him, he keeps right on about his 
own proper business of living! 



CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. 



Further Evidences in Nature: The Uni- 
versality of Life, — A Basis for 
"Mental Healing" 

This demonstration of the immortality 
of life in matter follows naturally on 
the recognition by science of the uni- 
versality of life. Interesting testimony 
on this point is afforded in a recent ar- 
ticle on "The Nature of Electricity/' 
by the Rev. J. A. Dewe. This writer 
argues that there is in every material 
atom a principle of motion, that life is 
such a principle, and that "the more 
science advances, the more it discovers 
that life is bound up with the most ele- 
mentary forms of matter. . . . Numer- 
ous discoveries, moreover, uphold the 
theory that all material nature is thus 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 39 

animated; the tartar upon our teeth, 
the corpuscles in the blood, the liquids 
contained in plants and vegetables, are 
all living." Electricity, magnetism, ter- 
restrial attraction, Mr. Dewe holds to be 
merely one and the same power acting 
with different forms and kinds of inten- 
sity. "That power," he says, "is generated 
by the action and reaction of material 
atoms one upon the other. It increases 
in intensity according as the superficies 
of the atoms are so placed that the cen- 
ters can enter into the closest proximi- 
ty, thus producing the three different 
grades of ordinary attraction, magnet- 
ism and electricity. The reason why 
the centers of the atoms — or, to speak 
more correctly, the atoms themselves — 
are thus spontaneously drawn toward 
each other is to be found in the fact, 
which is being daily proved to be more 
and more universal, that each atom is 
animated by a principle of life and feeling. 
This alone, in the whole range of na- 
ture, is found to be a spontaneous cause 
of motion ... A rudimentary life 



140 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



there must be attached to every atom 
however small; from the highest to the 
lowest organism there is present life; 
which, indeed, gradually diminishes so 
as to become imperceptible in its mani- 
festations, but never does it become al- 
together extinct." 

As to what this "principle of life and 
feeling," in every atom and animating 
it, really is, our material scientists 
have as yet reached no definite agree- 
ment. Spencer, Tyndall, and Huxley 
all confess themselves in the dark on 
this point. Edison, at once the boldest 
and the most practical of scientific ex- 
plorers, avows that his experiments 
have satisfied him that "every mole- 
cule of matter has a center of intelli- 
gence as well as force." 

This is verging very closely on the 
metaphysical theory which identifies this 
force with intelligence, assigning all 
phenomena of form and motion to 
causative intelligence, — to thought. In 
the truest sense, this invisible center of 
intelligence is the atom itself. Upon 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



141 



the action of that center, all peculiarities 
of form, substance and motion, — all the 
life of the atom, — absolutely depend. 
Without thought, without the action of 
intelligence, there would be no atom. 
What is true in the small is of course 
true in the large. "As a man thinketh 
so is he," is the announcement no longer 
of religious mysticism merely, but of 
scientific fact. I am what I am now be- 
cause of my thought in the past; I shall 
be what I want to be because of my 
thought in the future. The fact is un- 
deniable; the logic of the deduction 
drawn from it is not less so. 

An atom is a very small thing. Al- 
though it plays so important a part in 
our material science, no man has ever 
seen one, much less been able to hand- 
le, weigh, measure, smell or taste one. 
Its diameter is calculated at one fifty- 
millionth of an inch. We are unable to 
perceive, with our most powerful micro- 
scopes, objects which are less than one 
one-hundred thousandth of an inch in 
diameter, — so that it takes 500 atoms to 



142 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



make a speck big enough to begin to be 
perceptible under the microscope. Let 
us take something a little larger — some- 
thing, too, very closely connected with 
these immortal bodies of ours, and 
which affords undeniable evidence of 
an animating center of intelligence. 

Dr. Andrew Wilson of Edinburgh, a 
distinguished physiologist, in a recent 
article on the germ theory of disease, 
says: 

"Under a fairly high power of the microscope, 
blood is seen to present itself as a fluid clear as water 
(the lymph or serum of physiologists), and to derive 
its color from the presence of an enormous number 
of microscopic bodies which float in the liquid. 
These bodies are the red corpuscles. Seen en 
masse, they give to blood its well known hue. Un- 
der the microscope, and spread out in a thin layer, 
their color is seen to be of a yellowish tint. As re- 
gards size, the red corpuscles measure on an aver- 
age about one three-thousandth of an inch in diam- 
eter. * * * Existing in the proportion of about 
two or three to every thousand red ones, we find the 
white corpuscles of the blood. These corpuscles are 
colorless, and stand out in contrast to their red 
neighbors, which are colored with a substance called 
hoemoglobin, whereof iron is a prominent constit- 
uent. But more important is it to note that in its 
constitution each white corpuscle is a very different 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



body from its red neighbor. It is really a micro- 
scopic mass of living protoplasm. It has a nucleus 
in its interior, and in every respect we may regard it 
as a living cell. Moreover, it behaves itself as an in- 
dependent cell. Watched on a specially prepared 
microscope slide, we see the white corpuscle flow 
from one shade to another. In this respect it moves 
by alterations of its protoplasmic substance, just as 
does the animalcule we know as the amoeba, a deni- 
zen of stagnant waters everywhere. 

"Wonderful as it is to think that our blood teems 
with myriads of these independent living blood cells, 
it is yet more extraordinary to find that they re- 
semble the animalcule in another respect. The amoe- 
ba eats by engulfing its food particles with its soft 
protoplasm body. In like manner will a white blood 
corpuscle feed itself. It will engulf and ingest solid 
particles which fall in its way, and will reject indi- 
gestible matters. That work which we see the white 
corpuscle doing on the miscroscopic slide it effects 
within the animal tissues. We know now, as Dr. 
Waller knew in 1846, that, in virtue of its inde- 
pendent life, it can push its way through the soft, 
delicate walls of capillary blood vessels and pass 
into the tissues. In place of regarding these loco- 
motive powers as ways and works of unusual 
character, we now see that they form part and parcel 
of the complex living mechanism. While it is the 
duty of the red corpuscles to carry the oxygen 
breathed into the blood to all parts of the body, and 
conversely to convey the waste carbonic acid gas to 
the lungs, there to be exhaled, the function of the 
white corpuscles is of far more complicated char- 
acter. They perform a duty which not only lies very 



144 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



close to the maintenance of the organism at large in 
a natural sense, but which also bears an important 
relation to its preservation from agencies that per- 
petually threaten it with disease and death." 

Material science teaches us, besides 
this immortality and universality of life 
in matter, its homogeneity; resolving, 
by analysis, all forms in nature into 
some seventy simple elements, and in- 
dicating that further investigation will 
in all probability reduce these to three, 
— to the oxygen, nitrogen and carbon 
which go to make up the universal 
ether, that one all-pervasive matrix con- 
tained in and containing all forms of 
matter from the grain of sand to the 
solar universe. Science demonstrates 
the unity of all material forms, not only 
in their origin, but also in their absolute 
interpendence and correlation of orga- 
nization and continuance. As a pebble 
cast into the ocean vibrates in ever 
widening circles through the whole mass 
until the further shore is reached, so the 
displacement of a single grain of sand 
on the sea shore produces a disturbance 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 145 



throughout all the depths of immeasu- 
rable space, in all the suns and planets 
and stars; in all the myriad worlds we 
know through the telescope, and 
through the probably vaster myriads of 
worlds we have yet to know. 

Through recent developments in the 
comparitively new science of psycho- 
logy, the "impalplable" thought of man 
is shown to act immediately on the all- 
enfolding ether, inducing vibratory ac- 
tion, much as does the pebble on the 
waters of the brook. The reality of 
"thought waves'' has come to be al- 
most as fully recognized as is that of 
light waves, sound waves or heat waves. 
Even the unconsciously projected 
thought goes out in never ending waves. 
And these waves are creative forces — 
positive or negative, constructive or de- 
structive, good or evil, in their essence 
and in their inevitable effects. We are 
thinking, every moment — whether we 
know it or not, whether we will it or 
not, for the whole world, for all hu- 
manity present and future, and not for 



146 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



ourselves alone. How supremely im- 
portant it is, therefore, that this great 
force should be recognized for what it 
is; that it should be controlled and di- 
rected, and that it should be controlled 
and directed for good, rather than for 
evil! 

It may be objected that the mass of 
mankind will require many years of 
training and development to reach this 
power of consciously wise control and 
direction of thought. True, — and this 
is all the more reason why those of us 
whoafc recognize that "thoughts are real 
things" should vitally concern ourselves 
with the molding of conditions and en- 
vironment for "the general" to whom 
this wisdom is yet "caviare," so that the 
great torrent of unconscious thought 
which directly or indirectly affects every 
particular soul and body of us, for better 
or worse, shall be naturally and easily led 
into positive instead of negative chan- 
nels — made to irrigate our plains and 
lowlands causing the desert to blos- 
som as the rose, rather than permitted 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 147 



to inundate us by disintegrating and 
destroying floods. Reserving the 
fuller consideration of the scientific and 
rational bases of mental healing and al- 
lied phenomena for a future chapter 
dealing more particularly with the trans- 
mutation of the mortal into the immor- 
tal body, we may, in passing, call atten- 
tion here to the fact that the same rea- 
soning which recognizes in mind a force 
that is manifested, often unconsciously, in 
the arrest of decay and the substitution 
of health for disease in any degree, and 
which may be intelligently controlled 
and directed to that end, cannot logic- 
ally stop short of the recognition in 
this same force of a power subject to 
the will of man for the manifestation of 
health in the fullest degree, and the 
subjection of all negative conditions, 
t. e n in the attainment of immortality in 
the flesh! 

Much more than this, I venture, the 
assertion that all mental healing owes 
its efficacy to the fact that it is really 
produced through the recognition in 



148 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



even small degree of the same law whose 
fuller recognition will make life, 
immortal life, the true and normal 
condition of humanity, — death only its 
negative side, or non-manifestation 
through non-recognition, — an abnormal 
phenomenon due to undeveloped intel- 
ligence, and as preventable as are those 
yellow fever or cholera epidemics, 
which, within the memory of many, 
were regarded as inevitable dispensa- 
tions of Providence, as natural as life, 
— or rather as natural as death is now 
regarded. 



CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. 



Scientific Grounds for a Belief in Im- 
mortality Furnished by Psychic 
Laws and Phenomena, 

In a recent volume called "A Scienti- 
fic Demonstration of the Future Life," 
after reviewing the many and familiar 
arguments of poets, priests and philo- 
sophers from Plato to Emerson and 
from the Hindu mystics to Alger and 
Bishop Butler, — and after showing their 
fatal lack of conclusiveness, from the 
scientific standpoint, — Mr. Thomas Jay 
Hudson advances what he conceives to 
be valid and scientific grounds for the 
belief in a future life. These grounds 
consist of a mass of very interesting and 
important evidence in the shape of 



1 50 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

'psychic phenomena," so called, includ- 
ing facts observed and authenticated un- 
der conditions that properly entitle them 
to be regarded as affording scientific 
bases for any theory they can logically be 
shown to support. Briefly summed up 
his argument is to the effect that there 
is no faculty, emotion, or organism of 
the human mind that has not its use, 
function, or object. That man is en- 
dowed with a dual mind, in the author's 
judgment, has been abundantly demon- 
strated by experimental hypnotism, ce- 
rebral anatomy, and experimental sur- 
gery. The fact of duality alone, is pro- 
nounced sufficient to put the intelligent 
observer upon an earnest inquiry into 
the possible use, function, and object of 
a dual mental organism. His first query 
is, "What possible use is there for two 
minds, if both are to perish with the 
body?" A future life is thus at once 
suggested to him by this one isolated 
fact; and the suggestion is strengthened 
by what he calls the additional fact that 
while one of the two minds grows fee- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 151 



ble as the body loses its vitality, and is 
extinguished when the brain ceases to 
perform its functions, the other mind 
grows strong as the body grows weak, 
stronger still when the brain ceases to 
act, and reaches its maximum of power 
to produce observable phenomena at 
the very hour of physical dissolution. 
Mr. Hudson deems it simply impossible, 
from these facts alone, to resist the con- 
clusion that the mind which reaches its 
maximum of observable power at the 
moment of dissolution, is not extin- 
guished by the act of dissolution. These 
facts, therefore, are put forward as con- 
stituting presumptive evidence of a fu- 
ture life. 

"Each of the two minds," he says, 
"possesses powers and functions which 
are not shared by the other. Each of 
the two minds is hedged about by limi- 
tations not shared by the other. These 
powers and limitations are divided into 
three distinct classes; namely, first those 
which belong exclusively to the object- 
ive mind; secondly, those which belong 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



exclusively to the subjective mind; 
thirdly, those which are common to both 
minds." He asserts that those powers, 
functions, and limitations which belong 
to the first class pertain exclusively to 
physical life and environment; those 
which belong to the second class per- 
form no function whatever in physical 
life and are observable only under ab- 
normal physical conditions; those final- 
ly which belong to the third class are 
more or less imperfect, or finite, in their 
manifestations in the objective mind, 
whereas each faculty is perfect in the 
subjective mind. Thus we find man, as 
he is exhibited to us in the light of de- 
monstrable facts, possessed of a dual 
mental organism comprising two classes 
of faculties, each complete in itself. 
We find one class of faculties to be 
finite, perishable, imperfect, and yet 
well adapted to a physical existence and 
a material environment, and capable of 
development by the process of evolu- 
tion to a high degree of excellence, 
morally, physically, and mentally, 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



153 



within the limits of man's finite nature. 
We are asked to recognize that the 
noblest faculties belonging to physical 
man, those faculties which alone render 
his existence in this life tolerable, or 
even possible, and which give him do- 
minion over the forces of physical na- 
ture, are faculties which pertain exclu- 
sively to this life (?) 

On the other hand, he finds in man 
another set of faculties, each perfect in 
itself, and complete in the aggregate; 
that is to say, every faculty, attribute 
and power neccessary to constitute a 
complete personality being present in 
perfection; and we find that the most 
important of those faculties perform no 
normal function in physical life. Here, 
then, he says, we have a personality, 
connascent with the physical organism, 
but possessing independent powers. "Is 
it conceivable," asks Mr. Hudson, "that 
there have been created such faculties 
without a function, such powers without 
a purpose?" To his mind the answer is 
"Impossible!" If Nature is constant, no 



154 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

faculty of the human mind exists with- 
out a normal function to perform. If 
no faculty exists without a normal func- 
tion to perform, those faculties which 
do exist must perform their functions 
either in this life or in a future life. If 
man possesses faculties which perform 
no normal function in this life, it fol- 
lows that the functions of such faculties 
must be performed in a future life. To 
put the argument in a still more con- 
cise and purely syllogistic form, the 
author would place the propositions 
thus: Every faculty of the human mind 
has a normal function to perform either 
in this life or in a future life; some fac- 
ulties of the human mind perform no 
normal functions in this life; therefore, 
some faculties of the human mind are 
destined to perform their functions in a 
future life. 

Mr. Hudson submits that no scientist 
will, for a moment, question the sound- 
ness of the major premise of the above 
syllogism. It is self-evident, axiomatic. 
He contends, further, that no one who 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 155 

is at all familiar with the results of 
modern scientific research in the field 
of psychic phenomena will, for a mo- 
ment, gainsay the minor premise. The 
one faculty of telepathy alone, to say 
nothing of the faculty of intuitive per- 
ception, etc., is, in his opinion, demon- 
strative of the soundness of that propo- 
sition. The major and minor premises 
being each demonstrably true, the 
soundness of the conclusion that man is 
destined to inherit a future life is pro- 
nounced self-evident. 

This author's reasoning is a curious 
illustration of the dominance of a fixed 
idea. Concentrating his attention on his 
theory of a dual mind, he is blind to 
aught else that the facts he brings for 
ward plainly indicate; desiring to prove 
the continuance of individual existence 
ajter the death of the body, he entirely 
ignores the far more important and 
nearer conclusions to be derived from 
his facts and arguments, as to continu- 
ance of life in the body. He is led 
to emphasize his theory of the dual 



156 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



mind by separating, (or rather attempt- 
ing- to show a separation which does not 
really exist) , the nature and functions 
of what he calls the "subjective mind" 
from those of what he calls the "object- 
ive mind," — insisting on identifying the 
subjective exclusively with the life of 
man after the death of the body, — or 
at least with a principle of man's nature, 
depending for fullest life on bodily 
death — and the objective exclusively 
with man's present physical life in the 
body. The objective mind, he says, 
grows feeble as the body loses its vi- 
tality, and is extinguished when the 
brain ceases to perform its functions, 
while the subjective mind grows strong 
as the body grows weak, and reaches 
its maximum of power at the hour of 
physical dissolution. To be sure, much 
of the evidence cited by Mr. Hudson 
shows what he calls the subjective mind 
(but which, I think, may more accu- 
rately be termed the psychical con- 
sciousness), to be more active when the 
physical senses are at rest, or dormant; 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 157 



or even when cut off completely from 
the power of manifestation in observa- 
ble phenomena, or of perception on the 
physical plane, by the trance condition 
or by the complete death of the body. 
What this really proves is that the 
psychic consciousness is not entirely 
dependent on the body, nor on bodily 
conditions, for existence and manifesta- 
tion. It does not prove that this sub- 
jective mind, or psychic consciousness, is 
dependent on the disease or death of the 
physical body as much as it is on the 
health and life of that body. As well 
argue that, because the appreciation and 
enjoyment of the music of an opera is 
spoiled for the people in the parquet 
by the conversation of the people in the 
boxes, the people in the parquet will 
have to die and go to Heaven, or to 
Paris, before they shall ever be able to 
enjoy the opera. 

As a matter of fact, nearly all the 
evidence cited by this author to prove 
his theory, — together with much more 
that he might cite, but does not, — goes 



158 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



to show that there is a close and con- 
stant interrelation of function, and so 
presumably of structure, between the 
so-called subjective and objective minds. 
Of this nature is the frequent overlap- 
ping of the consciousness of one state on 
the consciousness of the other state, as 
witnessed especially in remembered 
dreams, on the one hand, and in the 
carrying of the waking impressions and 
experiences into the dream state, on the 
other. This evidence shows that there is 
a constant and undeniable influence of 
one mind on the other mind, if indeed 
the mind can be considered at all as 
dual in its nature. Hypnotism and tele- 
pathy show the subjective mind to be 
governed, even during the dormancy of 
the objective mind, by views of life, 
habits and customs that are prominent 
characteristics of the individual's ob- 
jective mind, and that are acquired 
through experience and teaching wholly 
on the objective plane. Similarly, the 
objective mind retains and is col- 
ored by suggestion, teaching and ex- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 159 



perience received in the subjective 
state. 

Of my own experience and observa- 
tion, I can say unhesitatingly that the 
exercise of the psychic consciousness in 
a very highly developed degree, — that 
is clairvoyance, clairaudience, automatic 
writing, inspirational speaking and mind 
reading, or telepathic communication, — 
is perfectly compatible with a sound and 
wholesome bodily condition; with full 
and bounding life and health in the phy- 
sical organism. Furthermore, we well 
know that in mental healing the health 
of the body is constantly helped and de- 
veloped through thought and conscious- 
ness on the subjective plane, that is, in 
the spirit, deliberately induced for the 
purpose of calling it into objective mani- 
festation in the flesh. 

The statement that "the objective 
mind is extinguished when the brain 
ceases to perform its functions/' is, I 
feel very sure, an utter mistake. The 
truth is, if we may argue from the 
mass of phenomena investigated and 



160 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



reported by the Society for Psychical 
Research, that this "objective mind" 
(really a human ego living on the ob- 
jective or physical plane) , on losing the 
use of its own particular brain, proceeds 
at the first opportunity to make use of 
the nearest brain it finds conveniently 
accessable, without much regard to the 
laws of meum and teitm. This is espe- 
cially likely to be the case if the ego in 
question had acquired the habit of using 
other people's brains, without acknowl- 
edgement or compensation, during his 
physical lifetime. 

Yet Mr. Hudson's reasoning, so far 
as it is directed towards proving his 
main point: the continued life of the 
individual after the death of the body, 
— is sound, and I think conclusive. Even 
more conclusive, to my mind, is his un- 
intended and probably unconscious de- 
monstration of "a valid scientific basis" 
for belief in continued life in the body. 
Function certainly argues place and op- 
portunity for the exercise of that func- 
tion. Evolution, as certainly, has shown 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



161 



us that function precedes structure. Ev- 
ery link in the development of man 
from the lower forms of life shows this 
unmistakably. If man to-day is clearly 
beginning to exercise, in even some 
faint and uncertain degree, functions 
that proclaim his possession of undying 
principles and powers — functions that 
will require for their fuller and freer 
exercise a superior and undying organ- 
ism, — it seems to me plain that he is 
far on the way towards the develop- 
ment, in this life and on this earth, of 
that superior and immortal body. 

According to a recognized scientific 
axiom, Nature makes no sudden jumps. 
The same law of evolution which has 
carried us from protozoa to man, may be 
trusted to furnish the needed forces for 
further development, from Man to Arch- 
angel, — if by archangel we mean a being 
as far beyond man in his present stage 
as that stage is beyond the beginnings 
of life in undifferentiated protoplasm. 

"Future life, regardless of the death 
of the body?" Certainly! And quite as 



162 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



certainly a future life in the body. The 
death of the body cannot deprive man 
of immortality. Quite as certainly the 
life of the body will not make him less 
sure of the life of the soul. If he really 
chooses life, and the way of life, in the 
body, he must live in the spirit as well as 
in the flesh, or rather in the flesh only in 
so far as the life of the flesh shall declare 
and express the life of the spirit. The 
boy is father to the man; to-day is the 
"future" of yesterday; to-morrow is the 
future of to-day. As we are to-day in 
possession of powers and faculties, 
knowledge and consciousness, of which 
in childhood we felt only some dimly 
understood premonitions, and which 
like Mr. Hudson's "subjective mind" 
"performed no normal function" in out 
child life, — so, when we shall grow 
into the immortalized body we shall 
come into the fuller realization of the 
faculties and functions of which we are 
now only dimly conscious. 

One of Mr. Hudson's arguments for a 
future life is echoed in an article in the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



163 



New York "Herald" by the Rev. Dr. 
George H. Hepworth, who says: 

" The body goes through the mysterious processes 
of growth, and continues to develop until it reaches 
a certain stature. Then the growth ceases, and by 
slow degrees the body declines in strength, until at 
last we enter the stage of childhood a second time. 

The law is that the body shall increase until it 
reaches its maximum of energy. It is safe, there- 
fore, to generalize, and say that everything has a 
purpose ahead of it, and ought to have such an en- 
vironment that this purpose can be reached, pro- 
vided the laws which govern it are obeyed. That 
statement proves itself, and is not subject to denial. 

* * Now, if it be true that the body grows by 
what it feeds on to its full height and strength, we 
ought to say without fear of contradiction that there 
is also an ideal perfection for mind and soul to 
reach, and that in some way and somewhere the op- 
portunity will be offered to attain that ideal. It 
would be strange to declare that one part of us can 
come to its maturity, but the other part never will, 
for it is plainly true that no human soul has ever yet 
reached that point where there was nothing more 
or better that it could do or become. * * * 
The idea of immortality, therefore, originates in the 
very necessity of the case, and we rightly argue that 
if God is just He will give us hereafter the oppor- 
tunity which not even He can furnish us within the 
narrow limits of earthly life. We may reverently 
assert that no soul ever can, under any conceivable 
circumstances, achieve in these seventy years a moral 



164 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



perfection which corresponds with the physical per- 
fection which the body easily attains. There is 
something wanting to the soul, then, and that some- 
thing is an extended opportunity which can only re- 
sult from an extended existence." 

Does not this argument assume, with- 
out warrant, a separation between soul 
and body? Dr. Hepworth rightly says 
that "the law is that the body shall in- 
crease until it reaches its maximum of 
energy." Evidently, he has in mind 
physical energy simply, as something 
entirely separate and apart from spirit- 
ual energy. Does not the soul of a man 
in the body increase? Does this writer 
not ignore utterly the fact that man — 
embodied man, the whole man — devel- 
ops mental, moral and spiritual energy 
side by side with physical energy, and 
that the very form and substance of his 
body are closely related to this develop- 
ment, — affecting and affected by it, re- 
flecting it, indexing it and going hand 
in hand with it? 

In any large sense, the body of man 
can never reach "its maximum of en- 
ergy," any more than can his mind. It 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 165 



must continue in ever-increasing devel- 
opment, in order to manifest in perpet- 
ual progression the perfection of the 
Infinite. No part of us really comes to 
"maturity," in Dr. Hepworth's sense of 
the word. The "extended opportunity," 
which "can only be given by extended 
existence," is truly a very necessity of 
the case. It is only life in the human 
body which has developed the desire 
for this opportunity. Life in the body 
has satisfied, is satisfying that desire, 
and will continue to satisfy it in greater 
and greater degree as the years roll on. 



CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. 



Argzcments for the Immortality of the 
Soul Which Also Go to Prove the 
Immortality of the Body 

An argument, which may not be re- 
garded as strictly scientific in the more 
material sense, but which certainly is 
so, in the logical sense, is that stated by 
the Rev. W. C. Gannett in his sermon 
on "Deathlessness": 

"Justice is an indestructible principle in the uni- 
verse. No postponement of the question, no soph- 
istry of prudence or expediency can ever make 
wrong other than wrong. There is no way of set- 
tling a question but by righting it. And this recog- 
nition gives us assurance of the deathless quality of 
soul. If justice asserts itself in the life of a nation, 
it is to vindicate itself in the career of an individual. 
We believe in immortality, because we believe in 
justice The immortal life is the fruition 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 67 



of law, not the fruit of miracle. The universal Piov- 
idence that includes bird and flower is the Provi- 
dence that is to have continuous use for the soul of 

man We build large hopes upon the 

great and beautiful laws of the universe. We place 
generous confidence in the Master Builder who so 

grandly forms the growing order The 

economy that wastes not an atom in all the realms 
of matter cannot afford to waste the bud that with- 
ers upon a mother's breast with the milk of its life 
untasted." 

These words of Mr. Gannett's were 
spoken in relation to the immortality, 
not of the human body, but of the hu- 
man soul. I quote them, because, in the 
light of the great truth into which I 
have come, it seems to me that every 
such argument based on really high 
ideals of immortal life, may be applied 
with equal, if not greater, force to the 
demonstration of the truth of the im- 
mortality of the body. The Universal 
Providence has continuous use for the 
soul of man, I verily believe. That 
same Providence as surely has continu- 
ous use for the immortal temple of the 
soul, in which, and by which, and 
through which, the soul — and the God 



l68 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



of which the individual soul is but an 
emanation — finds growth and expres- 
sion, exists and acts, is and does. 

To sing the glory of the immortal 
soul, and at the same time consider that 
soul something so separate and apart 
from the body, that the body is not 
partaker in the quality of eternal life, 
which is of the soul's essence, is cer- 
tainly to institute a comparison greatly 
to the disadvantage of the body; so 
greatly to its disadvantage that the old 
ascetics may well be excused for the 
"mortification of the flesh, " the fasting 
and scourging, the torture and neglect, 
with which they expressed their con- 
tempt for the human body, in order to 
glorify the human soul — to degrade and 
abase Man for "the greater glory of God !" 

And may we not trace to the same 
source much of the neglect, recklessness, 
and licentiousness of the prevalent de- 
filement of the body, a defilement which 
results in poisoning the springs of life 
at their source, and in the multiplication 
of human beings who manifest in their 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 69 



minds and bodies — not the glory of 
God and the immortal soul, but the na- 
tural results of this debasement of the 
body, and, with it, the debasement of 
the soul? 

From another writer of beautiful 
spirit, uplifted vision, and deep insight, 
Harriet Prescott Spofford, may be 
quoted a few lines which seem to con- 
vey more than a suggestion of the 
largest basis for a scientific argument in 
proof of the immortality of man, in 
body as in soul. 

"It requires no more than a small and limited vis- 
ion to see the tremendous revelation the spring al- 
ways makes, as if some splendid certainty should 
compensate us for the unsolved mystery otherwhere 
— not in any broad lettering of written promise that 
the soul shall live forever, but in the suggestions of 
all subtile analogy, while the earth rolls up out of 
shadow, and the year finds resurrection. From the 
small seed hidden in the blackness of death what 
white wonder of a flower is this that has come tremu- 
lously into the freer life of the outer air, bathed in the 
sunshine of the vaulted heaven? It is not the flower 
of last year come back again, but it is the identity of 
the seed continued in a larger, lovelier life, and it 
gives to the dullest mind, to the darkest doubter, a 



170 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

hint of the singleness of the soul, a prophecy of the 
reality of the risen spirit" 

The risen spirit, let us add, in the 
risen body! 

"The lesson of the springtime and 
the lesson of the Christian gospel," 
says Charles G. Ames, "seem like one 
story told in two languages. The mean- 
ing of both is that there is a life-giving 
power at work in outward nature and in 
the soul of man. Seeds sprout, trees 
put forth leaves, flowers open to the 
sun; so do the faculties of the human 
mind, and the plants of faith, hope and 
love grow from feeble beginnings and 
ripen into fruitfulness of character. 
The light and warmth of the sun, the 
wandering currents of air, and the cir- 
culating moisture which reaches every 
root and climbs to every leaf, carry with 
them the elements of life; and not less 
surely do the energies of truth and 
grace refresh and renew in our minds 
and hearts the qualities which make us 
children of God. . . . The creative 
processes are continuous, both in nature 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 171 



and in man, who is really a part of na- 
ture. 'I live by the Father/ said Jesus; 
'I lay down my life and take it up again, 
because I have received this command- 
ment from Him/ The power which 
carries us through life is a power upon 
which we can depend/' 

Sir Edwin Arnold, in an article on 
" Death and Afterwards/' originally 
published in the "Fortnightly Review/' 
and since republished, with a supple- 
ment, in book form, states the argu- 
ment for man's immortality in most 
convincing terms. The importance of 
the recognition of this immortality is 
well stated. 

"If we were all sure, what a difference it would make! 
A simple 'yes,' pronounced by the edict of immensely 
developed science; one word from the lips of some 
clearly accredited herald sent on convincing authority, 
would turn nine-tenths of the sorrow of earth into glo- 
rious joys, and abolish quite a large proportion of the 
faults and vices of mankind. Men and women are 
naturally good; it is fear, and the feverish passion to 
get as much as possible out the brief span of mortal 
years, which breed most human offences. And many 
noble and gentle souls, which will not stoop to selfish 
sins, even because life is short, live prisoners, as it 
were, in their condemned cells of earth, under whav 



172 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



they deem a sentence from which there is no 
appeal, waiting in sad but courageous incertitude 
the last day of their incarceration; afraid to love, 
to rejoice, to labor, and to hope, lest love shall 
end in eternal parting, gladness in the cheerless 
dust, generous toil in the irony of results effaced, 
and hope itself in a vast and scornful denial. 
What a change if these could really believe that they 
are cherished guests in an intermediate mansion of a 
benign universe, not doomed captives in one of its 
mournful dungeons!" 

This writer claims, and justly, undy- 
ing life, not for man alone, but for all 
living creation. This is perceived to be 
part of the law by which man has un- 
dying life. He says: 

"In regard to the argument of equal rights of con- 
tinuous existence for all things which live, it must be 
admitted. If thebathybius — nay, even if the trees and 
mosses — are not, as to that which makes them indi- 
vidual, undying, man will never be. If life be not as 
inextinguishable in every egg of the herring and in 
every bird and beast, as in the poet and the sage, it is 
extinguishable in the angels and archangels. . . . 
Each stage of existence can only be apprehended and 
defined by the powers appertaining to it. . . . The 
inherent disability of terrestrial speech and thought 
ought to be kept more constantly in view. How ab- 
surd it is, for example, to hear astronomers arguing 
against existence in the moon or in the sun, because 
there seems to be no atmosphere in one, and the 
other is enveloped in blazing hydrogen! Beings are 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 73 



at least conceivable as well fitted to inhale incandes- 
cent gas, or not to breathe any gases at all, as to live 
upon the diluted oxygen of our own air. Embodied 
life is, in all cases, the physiological equation of its 
environing conditions. Water and gills, lungs and 
atmosphere, co-exist by correlation; and stars, suns 
and planets may very well be peopled with proper in- 
habitants as natural to them as nut-bushes to us, 
though entirely beyond the wit of man to imagine. 
Even here, in our own low degrees of life, how could 
the oyster comprehend the flashing cruises of the 
sword-fish, or he, beneath the waves, conceive the 
flight and nesting of the bird? Yet these are near 
neighbors and fellow-lodgers upon the same globe. . . 
We have to think in terms of earth-experience, as we 
have to live by breathing the earth-envelope. . . . 
We only meditate safely when we realize that space, 
time, and the phenomena of sense are provisional 
forms of thought. Mathematicians have made us 
familiar with at least the idea of space of four and 
more dimensions. As for time, it is an absurd illu- 
sionary appearance due partially to another illusion^ 
that of the seeming succession of events, and partly to 
the motion of heavenly bodies, so that by forgetting 
everything, and by going close to the North Pole and 
walking eastwards, a man might, astronomically, wind 
back again the lost days of his life upon a reversed cal- 
endar. Such simple considerations rebuke materialists 
who think they have found enough in finding a 'law/ 
which is really but a temporary memorandum of ob- 
served order, leaving quite unknown the origin of it 
and the originator." 



In another place Sir Edwin Arnold 



174 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



cites the familiar delusion of our senses 
by lower modes of matter. A good 
illustration of the possibility that there 
are more things in heaven and earth 
than people see with their physical eyes 
is that cited here: 

"The solid block of ice, whereon we stood and 
skated, is just as existent when it has melted into wa- 
ter and become dissipated as steam; but it disappears 
for us. The carbonic acid gas, which we could not 
see, is compressed by the chemist into fleecy flakes 
and tossed from palm to palm. St. Paul was a much 
better physical philosopher than the materialists and 
skeptics when he declared 'The things not seen are 
eternal.* But these invisible, eternal things are not, 
on account of their exquisite subtlety, to be called 
'supernatural.' They must belong, in an ascending, 
yet strictly connected chain, to the most substantial 
and to the lowest, if there be anything low. The eth- 
ereal body, if there be such a garb, which awaits us, 
must be as real as the beef-fattened frame of an East 
End butcher. . . . We need to abolish utterly the 
perilous mistake that anything anywere is 'super- 
natural,' or shadowy, or vague." 

The dependence of any rational con- 
ception of continued life upon a recog- 
nition of the law of re-incarnation is 
more than suggested by Sir Edwin Ar- 
nold in the following paragraph: 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 75 



"If there has been a boundless Past leading to this 
odd little Present, the individual, it is clear, remem- 
bers nothing. Either he was not; or he lived uncon- 
scious; or he was conscious, but forgets. It may be he 
always lived, and inwardly knows it, but now 'disre- 
members'; for it is notable that none of us recall the 
first year of our human existence, though we were 
certainly then alive. . . . If to live forever in the 
future demands that we must have lived forever in the 
past, there is really nothing against this! 'End and 
beginning are dreams'; mere phrases of our earthly 
limited speech. . . Where does nature show 
signs of breaking off her magic, that she should stop 
at the five organs and the sixty or seventy elements? 
Are we free to spread over the face of this little eartl^ 
and never freed to spread through the solar system 
and beyond it?" 

Walt Whitman's splendid poem, "The 
Passage to India," closes the essay, fol- 
lowing this eloquent asseveration of 
faith : 

11 All our fears are needless, and not one single hu- 
man hope, expectation, or aspiration is half great 
enough, or glad enough, or bold enough; the 
secret of the universe is, after all, an open one, like 
that of the earth's motion, or any other tardily-made 
intellectual discovery illuminating the perpetual fact 
that 'things are not what they seem.' . . . We de- 
bate with vast metaphysical periphasis 'past, present 
and future/ and shall perchance discover — though 



176 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



still short of all ultimates — that there is only an eter- 
nal Now." 

Charles Alva Lane's poem "Amrita," 
in "The Open Court," gives beautiful 
expression to this thought of the soul's 
immortal mission: 

Nay, Soul, thy span is not from womb to tomb: 
Thine every when and where of space and years; 
Thou art the past incarnate, and thine ears 

Know not a prophecy of death. The doom 

Of all deeds done thou art, and thou the womb 
Wherein a dream of full omniscience bears 
Forever toward the birth ; for lo, Life rears 

So vast a hope amid its mystery-gloom! 

Yea, Soul, in thee the living past fares hence, 
And fronts the future with a nascent god, 

In sleepless toil amid the elements 
Enkindling thought, and waking sense in sod: 
The Infinite woos the outward: Life grows broad, 

Subliming Nature to Intelligence. 



CHAPTER SIXTEENTH 



The Divine Body a Product of the 
Divine Life. 

"The stone which the builders rejected, the same is 
become the head of the corner." — Matt, xxi., 42-44. 

"The life is more than the meat, and the body is 
more than raiment." — Luke xii., 23. 

The little word more translates and 
makes comprehensible in our every-day 
life the great word "infinite." Eternity, 
or, as the Nicene creed has it, "World 
without end," is always to-day and to- 
morrow, not to-morrow alone. Living 
forever means continuance of life — liv- 
ing longer, living more, than we have 
lived. The same means by which we 
extend life for one year will serve to 



1 7 8 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



extend it for another year, and so on 
indefinitely. 

The divine body is a product of the 
divine life; it is itself Divine Life and re- 
produces Divine Life, brings forth after 
its kind. The old adage, mens sana in 
corpore sano, has familiarized us with the 
fact that even among the ancients it was 
known that a healthy mind requires a 
healthy body. It is a rule that works 
both ways. A diseased body means a 
diseased mind: a diseased mind means 
a diseased body. Altogether aside from 
the demonstrations of mind cure, so- 
called, we know that where the mind is 
diseased the body cannot be healthy. 
Hallucinations or delusions, — especially 
of a religious order, — insanity and im- 
becility, are always accompanied by 
bodily weakness or other disorder. So 
clearly is this recognized in the modern 
treatment of the insane, as of the mor- 
ally deficient, that in the leading insane 
hospitals, as in reformatories, it is held 
that these mental and moral defects 
may be entirely eradicated by restoring 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 79 



the body to a normal condition of health 
and vigor. The work done by Mr* 
Brockway at the Elmira Reformatory, 
in New York State, by which hardened 
young criminals have been transformed 
into honest, industrious and manly men 
by systematic diet and gymnastic exer- 
cises, in connection with manual train- 
ing, designed to correct the bodily ir- 
regularities that always accompany and 
indicate moral and mental irregularities, 
is frequently cited as pointing the way 
to rational prison reform. 

Flesh is important, not as an end in 
itself, but as an essential means to an 
end much more important than the 
means to it: that end is life. Life, in 
turn, must have an objeet. What is the 
chief object of human life? I think we 
shall agree with Balzac that it is the pro- 
duction of ideas. The process is one of 
action and reaction on an ascending 
scale throughout. Take the idea, God 
is Love, perhaps the greatest idea hu- 
manity has so far produced. Only a 
body of clean, sound flesh, through 



180 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



which coursed blood well oxygenated 
by the action of large lungs, and sup- 
plying brains and nerves with whole- 
some nutrition, — only such a body could 
furnish the divine alembic in which the 
sweetness and light of all the impres- 
sions and suggestions of outer nature, 
all the experiences and emotions of ra- 
cial and individual history and growth, 
all the lights and shadows, all the joys 
and sorrows of life, may be so truly 
blended and combined as to be trans- 
muted into the pure gold of a concep- 
tion concentrating in three words this 
w r ealth of meaning. Having been thus 
given birth, the idea in its turn cheers, 
uplifts, gladdens, strengthens and enno- 
bles all humanity, soul and body. 

Of course, there is thus, in our new 
and growing recognition of the impor- 
tance of physical culture, a danger of 
flying to extremes. A nation of San- 
dows or Sullivans would hardly be a 
nation of saints or heroes. It would 
riot be a strong nation, even in the mili- 
tary sense. As David with his sling, 



THE LIVING CHRIST. l8l 



and the skill to use it, was really 
mightier than the huge Goliath, so one 
of our "modern Sampsons/' with all his 
muscular development, would be but a 
pigmy before the veriest weakling 
armed with a pistol and knowing how 
to shoot straight. 

To sacrifice brain to brawn is almost 
as bad as the sacrifice of brawn to brain, 
which makes the average business or 
professional man unfit for military ser- 
vice or athletic enjoyment, — a creature 
of aches and pains, frequently disabled 
for the performance of his professional 
duties, a sacrifice which, in many cases, 
brings him to actual break-down when 
he should be in the prime of vigor and 
usefulness. The sacrifice in this case 
becomes a blind, senseless and useless 
one, defeating instead of furthering its 
object. 

There is a golden mean here, as in 
all things, — a harmony, in which body 
and brain are fed and grown together 
symmetrically, and so continue always in 
good working order — always in increas- 



182 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



ing development. It is this harmony 
that should be the definite object of 
those who would be truly immortal. 

The Oriental conception of the body 
as pertaining in its very nature only to 
the limited and conditioned, — and there- 
fore limiting and conditioning the mind 
and the life of the man who dwells in 
it, — owes its origin probably to the hot 
climate of India, and its languorous, 
indolent atmosphere. These conditions 
naturally predispose the people of that 
land to a physical inactivity, with re- 
sulting atrophy of muscles, flabbiness 
of fibre, and sluggishness of circulation. 
The whole bodily organism is thus 
changed from a thing of life into a 
thing of death. Under the same influ- 
ences of climate, strengthened and crys- 
talized by age-long habit, the emotional 
nature, and with it the intellectual, are 
ripened into premature and unbalanced 
intensity. It is small wonder, therefore, 
that the sick and starved body (which 
has become the normal body of the 
Oriental) is felt to be a clog and a 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 183 



hindrance, a dead-weight, a veritable 
prison-house to the soul, in which man's 
earthly life is cribbed, cabined and con- 
fined, as are the lives of the Chinese 
women with bandaged feet, and our 
own women in corseted waists. 

If we had the sick bodies and the 
burning brains of the average Hindoo, 
we should undoubtedly feel as he does: 
that physical life is but pain and sorrow 
and the body an incumbrance to be 
gotten rid of as quickly as possible. 

Lengthoi life without breadth and full- 
ness of life is, as the Psalmist truly says, 
but "labor and sorrow," (Psalm xc, 10). 
Protracted "old age" is only protracted 
decay, protracted dying. The centenari- 
an, or the septuagenarian, who maintains 
a mere animal, or rather vegetative ex- 
istence — taking no part or interest in 
humanity's onward march — who remains 
in Shakespeare's seventh age, "sans 
eyes, sans teeth, sans hair, sans every- 
thing," does not really live. He is no 
more alive than a blasted tree, which, 
by favoring accident, remains erect in 



184 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



pathetic poverty — a bare, bony and 
blackened finger pointing to the sky, 
long after it should have been cut down 
and burned. From such an old age 
those whom the gods love are well 
spared. How different this from the 
ever vernal age of a Longfellow or a 
Holmes, a Goethe or a Humboldt, 
a Gladstone or a Morris — of those who, 
whatever their years, "die young." 

"To live," Victor Hugo says, "is to 
have justice, truth, reason, devotion, 
probity, sincerity, common sense, right 
and duty welded into the heart; to know 
what one is worth — what one can do 
and should do." 

The oneness of the Infinite Mind and 
the oneness of that Mind with its 
thought, in the particular as in the gen- 
eral, finds beautiful demonstration in 
the fact that our every thought is or- 
ganized into flesh and blood. The 
highest and deepest thought of hu- 
manity was organized into the body — 
the personality — of the archetypal Man, 
Jesus, in accordance with precisely the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 185 



same law that governed the manifesta- 
tion in flesh and blood of the polar op- 
posite of that Perfection in the person 
of the wretched and loathsome leper, 
whom he healed with a touch. If Jesus 
had separated his religious from his 
earthly life, by setting apart one day in 
the week and one place in the city for 
devotion and worship; giving the re- 
maining six-sevenths of his time and at- 
tention, his aspirations and efforts, his 
thought and work, to interests and am- 
bitions, labor and production, acquisi- 
tion and accumulation, in which the re- 
ligion he summed up in one word of 
four letters had no part, then he would 
not have been the Christ. His divine 
and immortal nature would not have 
been manifested in his body and in the 
powers exercised by, in and through the 
body. 

The divine body is the product of the 
divine image or ideal translated into 
action. Idea throughout the universe, 
on every plane of life, is connected by 
an unbroken chain of infinitesimal links 



l86 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



with its manifestation. In a series of 
very interesting experiments, Prof. El- 
mer Gates of Washington has demon- 
strated that the various emotions pro- 
duce corresponding chemical changes 
in the perspiration, and that the 
thoughts of lust and anger set up a ner- 
vous and muscular action similar in na- 
ture, though slighter in degree, to that 
caused by the actual commission of 
theft, adultery or murder. 

The fact that thoughts, emotions, de- 
sires are actual forces, — anabolic and 
katabolic, as they are good or evil, and 
that they produce by reflecting, photo- 
graphing, projecting themselves in ac- 
tion, tissue changes in the human body, 
is not, however, an entirely new discov- 
ery. Every physician who recognizes 
the value of cheerfulness in the attend- 
ants and surroundings of the sick room; 
who guards carefully against intrusion 
or disturbance likely to affect the mind 
of the invalid, or who prescribes rest, 
recreation and change of scene, testi- 
fies, consciously or unconsciously, to the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 187 



recognition of this law, in some small 
degree. "As a man thinketh in his 
heart," whether the thought is carried 
into action openly or secretly, "so is he" 
in his visible flesh and blood, as well as 
in his invisible "spirit." The body is 
the outside, the visible side of the spirit. 
The widow's mite or the cup of cold 
water, given in love, energises, vitalizes, 
uplifts and transfigures all the elements 
of the body into the manifestation of 
fuller and fuller, longer and longer, life 
in the body. Precisely the same action, 
performed, not in love, but out of con- 
formity to ceremonial or custom, or to 
be seen and praised of men, acts upon 
all the fluids *nd tissues of the giver's 
body like a deadly poison. 

The rail/oad or manufacturing mag- 
nate who takes advantage of his power 
and the pressure upon the labor market, 
to reduce the wages of an army of em- 
ployees to the starvation point, really 
hurts himself more than he hurts others. 
When out of the increased dividend 
secured by this reduction in wages, our 



188 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



poor magnate builds a church, a hos- 
pital or a library, — then indeed does he 
plant the deadliest bacteria in all his 
flesh and blood; then does he become 
an object for our commiseration far 
more pitiable than the blind and maimed 
beggar at his gate! 

For many of us, doubtless, it has 
been difficult to reconcile Christ's fierce 
denunciation of the Scribes and Phari- 
sees, and his scourging of the money- 
changers from the Temple, with his gos- 
pel of love and non-resistance. What is 
the explanation? The one most com- 
monly offered is that Jesus in his hu- 
manness rather than his Ckrtstness, (as 
if his Christness were not his highest 
humanness) , was overcome by a passion 
of righteous indignation, which he after- 
wards repented in the exclamation; 
"The zeal of Thine house hath eaten 
me up! 

The real explanation, it appears to 
me, is made clear by the new interpre- 
tation of the resurrection here present- 
ed. The Temple in Jerusalem was only 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 189 



symbolical of, or a correspondence to 
"the temple not made with hands;" this 
Temple of the Living God, which Jesus 
pulled down, and in three days raised 
up again; this immortal body of flesh 
and blood. The entrance into it of the 
money-changers; that is, of thoughts 
and desires that produce nothing them- 
selves, yet levy toll on all the products of 
others for the use of a mere medium of 
exchange; — in the wrongful appropria- 
tion of the usury that should accrue to 
the users — turns the house of God into 
a den of thieves indeed. By reversing 
the law of givtngvaX.o the law of getting, 
every previously honest atom doing 
honest work in the body, — every bone 
and sinew, every nerve and muscle, 
every drop of blood, — becomes cor- 
rupted and turns thief. The atoms of 
the man's body — falling out of the 
healthy mutual action in harmonious 
co-operation, on which their health, 
their very life, depends, — follow the ex- 
ample set by the man in his dominant 
thought. They steal from each other. 



190 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



Stealing from each other, of course, they 
murder each other. 

"He takes my life who takes the means whereby I 
live." 

They can only steal from and murder 
each other. And that, plainly enough, 
is stealing from and murdering them- 
selves. It is the same in the social organ- 
ism, only in more intense degree. We 
are all members one of the other, and 
all members of one body. Every thief 
robs himself; every murderer is a sui- 
cide. No man hath any profit, any life, 
by what he gets, — only by what he 
gives. 

"That which I gained I lost; 
That which I saved I spent; 
That which I gave I have." 



CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. 



As a Man Thinketh in His Heart, So is 
He, in Body as well as Soul: This from 
the Very Nature of His Substance and 
Structure. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by 
violence, but it is the violence of love. 
When the Christ enters the body, which, 
after all, is his house, remember, and 
finds that thieves have, in temporary 
unconsciousness of his presence, made 
this temple their very own den, preying 
upon and destroying each other, marring 
and defiling the sacred place in every 
part, he is compelled by the condition of 
things to lay his whip of small cords 
across their shoulders and to drive them 
forth. It is the only argument thieves 
can understand. It is not that the 
Christ loves the thieves less, but that 



192 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



he loves the body more; the body whose 
life depends upon its being kept clean, 
pure, and undefiled, that purity may 
dwell in it. This is not a mere ques- 
tion of " ethics.'' It is simply another 
illustration of the working of the im- 
mutable and eternal law of life in 
Nature herself; declaring itself and 
vindicating itself by annihilating every- 
thing that attempts to stand in its 
way. It is as simple and as easily un- 
derstood as that a heap of rubbish, 
encumbering and contaminating our 
back yard, should burn when the match 
is applied. The rubbish may hiss and 
sputter and smoke; but, if the flame has 
free play, the rubbish must go, leaving 
the place it had encumbered open and 
purified. It is as natural as the boiling 
and bubbling of water over the fire. 
Some mental healers call this process 
"chemicalization," and regard it as an 
inevitable unpleasantness, generally 
weakening the system and sometimes 
fatal, — because patients have died under 
it. But if the patient will absolutely 



THE LIVING CHRIST. I93 



let go of the rubbish, yield it up as a 
willing burnt sacrifice, so to speak, and 
take himself quite out of the burning 
and out of the range of its smoke and 
smell, he need not suffer — he may let 
the rubbish do all the suffering. Indeed, 
he may, following this course, exper- 
ience all the delights that stir the small 
boy's heart at an election-night bonfire. 

The fear which turns a man's hair 
white in an hour, or which instantly 
dries up the milk in a mother's breast, 
affects chemically and mechanically (if 
you please,) first the nerve currents and 
fibres, then the blood, then the tissues 
of all the body in greater or less degree. 
If the change is more evident in the 
hair than in any other part, that is only 
because the hair — from the delicacy of 
its structure and its intimate relation to 
the nervous system, especially to that 
great nerve ganglion, the brain — re- 
flects most vividly and immediately, the 
character and condition of spirit and 
body. So the sentiment that treasures 
a lock of hair from the head of a loved 



194 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



one has a sound scientific basis. Even 
a momentary thought of anger, anxiety, 
avarice, lust, fear, or hate, distorts the 
features, impairs respiration, retards or 
quickens the circulation of the blood 
and alters its chemical composition. 
Disease in some form, lasting deformity 
of face or figure, are the inevitable re- 
sults of such thoughts, when continued 
long enough. In an individual, as in a 
nation, experience, environment and 
that tendency or habit created by repe- 
tition, develop what may be called a 
dominant thought. This thought cre- 
ates a distinct form after its own image 
and likeness. 

Man contains, man is, all forms of 
life, mineral, vegetable and animal. 
In face and in figure, as in character 
and conduct, he manifests that mineral, 
vegetable, or animal, to which his 
thought gives dominance, and which 
grows by what it feeds on. We recog- 
nize this unconsciously when we de- 
scribe a man as of iron will, a woman 
as stony-hearted, a money getter as a 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 1 95 



gold bug; when we speak of a man as a 
sturdy oak, a broken reed, a lion-heart- 
ed leader, an eagle-eyed warrior, a fox- 
visaged thief, or when we describe Eng- 
lish pluck and tenacity as "bull-dog." 

All the various types, with their pe- 
culiarities of form, color and smell, 
which Swedenborg saw in his spiritual 
spheres, may be seen any day, in even 
greater variety, all about us on this 
mundane sphere, by one whose eyes are 
opened. 

It must be remembered always, how- 
ever, that what is true in the little, is 
true in the large; and in infinitely 
greater degree, precisely because of the 
supremacy of the higher over the lower, 
the positive over the negative. There 
is no point on the downward path at 
which, through recognition, one may 
not abandon it utterly and absolutely, 
and find himself instantly and ever 
after on the upward path, one of an in- 
numerable army of men and angels 
united in forward endeavor. It is not 
so much a question of "Where are 



IQ6 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

we now?" as "In what direction are we 
going ?" 

"How far from here to Heaven? 

Not far, my friend, 
One single hearty step, 
Will all thy journey end." 

The man whose chains are broken 
and whose prison is opened, through 
the opening of his heart and his mind 
to the light of Truth, and who gives 
himself to the search for Truth, fear- 
lessly and faithfully, finds the very stars 
in their courses fighting for him. All 
the mighty forces of the universe, ever 
making for more light and more life, 
and for the manifestation of that life 
and light in mankind, enter into him, 
interpenetrate and uplift him. As the 
darkness of night disappears before the 
dawn, so all weakness and error and 
sickness and pain, all distortion and de- 
formity, in the body and mind of a 
man, are dispelled by the irresistible 
and invincible inflow of Truth invited 
by its recognition. 



CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. 



The Law of Lfe is the Law of Use — 
The Process by Which Jesus Performed 
His Mighty Works — Genesis of Men- 
tal Healing. 

We have come to recognize the hu- 
manity of Jesus, and, through that re- 
cognition, the divinity of humanity. We 
have grasped the far higher, larger, 
grander and holier conception of a 
God manifesting Himself in Law, and 
not in Miracle. We have also passed 
beyond that tendency embodied in 
Skepticism on the one hand and in 
Blind Belief on the other, which Roche- 
foucauld so sharply satirized in his 
aphorism: "The mediocre mind con- 
demns what it does not understand." 
So we may, with sincere reverence, ask: 



1 98 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



what was the process by which Jesus 
the Christ performed those mighty 
works men have so long called "mira- 
cles," in unconscious derogation of the 
character and spirit of the Divine Man, 
and of the God in him, to the rank of a 
mere wonder-worker, or conjurer? 

As has already been briefly pointed 
out, all the mighty works of Jesus — the 
giving sight to the blind, hearing to the 
deaf, wholeness and health to the crip- 
pled and the leprous, the changing of 
water into wine at Canaa, the multipli- 
cation of the loaves and fishes in the 
desert, the marvellous draught, his 
walking on the waves, his bringing the 
dead to life, — all these were only the 
lesser and varied manifestations of the 
Christ's conscious knowledge and recog- 
nition of Man's true nature; and of his 
oneness with that Infinite and eternal 
Life, from which he proceeds; his One- 
ness as well in Outer Manifestation, as 
in underlying Essence and Substance, 
with the Father; with the Permanent 
and Indestructible, the Universal Intel- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 199 



iigence or Energy we call God. Seeing 
clearly that whatever man is or does at 
any stage of development is the direct 
or indirect result of thought, consciously 
or unconsciously imaging' itself, in 
greater or less distinctness, his mind 
perceived and firmly grasped the logi- 
cal sequence of the great and immuta- 
ble law, thus demonstrated: the recog- 
nition of the power in the mind of man 
to command and control all things less 
than Man, — not in violation of natural 
law, but through its larger recognition. 
He "yielded himself to the will of God," 
in a very true sense; but it was in asser- 
tion, not in submission. To will is to 
do! Man has done all that he has ever 
desired and sought, when he has willed 
to do it in absolutely confident, fearless 
and certain exercise of his power. 
Every step of progress from barbarism, 
and from animalism, may be traced to 
this growth of man with the growth of 
his aims. Every step downward in de- 
generation may be traced to a relaxa- 
tion of his grasp on the heights attained, 



200 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



or to a fatal self-satisfaction, that has 
barred his progress upward and onward 
by a mental dead-wall, forming, so to 
speak, a cul de sac, in which the ever 
restless and unsatisfied energy that had 
brought him thus far, is forced back 
upon itself. 

In the body of every individual, — as 
in all societies and organizations of men 
of any and every character, military, 
religious, political or industrial, — we 
have constant illustration of the truth 
that the life of God is so intensely vi- 
bratory, so powerful and full of fire, 
that no soul can receive and retain it; 
that the life of God can only pour into 
a soul when every atom of the being is 
turned outward in love to others, rather 
than inward in love to self. 

The law of life is use. This is the 
lesson of the parable of the talents. 
Those who used that which was con- 
ferred upon them, and so produced an 
increase, were rewarded; while those 
who had not so labored were deprived 
'of (that is, wasted and lost) even that 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 201 



which they had received. Those that 
labor for the true life, will come into 
consciousness of oneness with the Source 
of Life in ever increasing measure; 
those who do not so labor will lose the 
life they already have. 

The life of the body in all its parts, — 
brain and nerves, heart and stomach, 
blood and muscles, bone and sinew, — 
can only be preserved, continued, re- 
newed, increased and developed in 
power and beauty by constant and har- 
monious use. Throughout nature, in 
fact, it is an unfailing law (not less on 
the side unseen than that of the seen) 
that use brings increase; disuse brings 
loss, decay, death. 

The Divine Man could turn water 
into wine, and could multiply the loaves 
and fishes, because he held in his hands, 
— that is, in his own organism of flesh 
and blood, as the crowning manifes- 
tation of organized life, in conscious 
oneness with all life — the power of un- 
limited command over all lesser forms 
of that Infinite and Eternal Energy of 



202 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



which his own body was the highest 
form. 

Now let us note clearly the limitation 
of the powers of Jesus, and what it 
shows us. Let us learn the not less im- 
portant lesson of what may be regarded 
as his "failures." 

"And he did not many mighty works there, because 
of their unbelief."— Matt, xiii., 58. 

It were easier for Jesus to move the 
mountains into the sea and the sea up- 
on the dry land; to quell the winds and 
subdue the waves; aye, to command 
even the sun (or the earth) to stand 
still, than to cure a blind man against 
the blind man's will! 

What then happened in the case of 
the blind whose eyes were opened? 
Picture to yourself the unfortunate, de- 
prived of sight, dwelling in darkness, 
accepting his lot in hopeless resignation. 
He has been blind from birth, say, an 
object of pity and commiseration from 
all around him. Not only his own indi- 
vidual thought but also this thought of 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



203 



others, has for years tended to deepen 
and strengthen the idea of his blindness 
and the further crystalization of that 
idea in his physical condition. One day, 
a whisper comes to this unfortunate, of 
a young Prophet who is preaching in the 
fields and on the market places, deliv- 
erance to the captive, health to the sick, 
cleanness to the leper, hearing to the 
deaf, — sight to the blind. "Ah !" thinks the 
afflicted one, "/ am blind; can he give 
me sight? But no; it is a spiritual de- 
liverance and healing and life that is 
meant, not now in this body, but after 
death in the next world. I must bear 
this present visitation of God until 
death brings me release." 

"Not so," says a neighbor. "This 
Prophet preaches of spiritual gifts and 
glories in the coming time, it is true, 
but also in a time that is always at 
hand. The sick are healed, and the lame 
made whole by him, here and now!" 

Then, for the first time in all his life, 
this blind, and probably old, man is 
stirred in every pulse with the thought: 



204 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



"I want to see." Permeating the very 
air he now breathes, with larger, deeper 
inspiration; oxygenating every drop of 
his blood, coursing with the changed 
blood through every vein and trans- 
forming every fibre of flesh, of nerve 
and muscle, the warmed and lifted blind 
man, in his new strange elation, moves 
forward another step. He thinks: "I 
may be healed." 

A troop of joyous possibilities enter 
into him with this thought. To actually 
see all the wonderful life about him, of 
which through touch and hearing, or 
report of others, he has been only 
vaguely, dimly, darkly conscious! He 
forgets his years of hopelessness; for- 
gets his acceptance of and resignation 
to blindness. He remembers no more 
the thought preached to him for conso- 
lation in the past, that his blindness is 
a visitation of God, caused in God's 
own inscrutable wisdom, for His own 
honor and glory. He cries out: "God 
is good! God is all powerful! Lead me 
to this Prophet of God, that through 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 205 



him sight maybe given to me!" By this 
time, a very powerful action has been 
set up in the blind man's whole system; 
the dynamic force of mind in thought 
has already transformed, or is trans- 
forming the static condition of mind in 
matter, in all the elements of his body. 
He almost sees. But this is only prepa- 
ration for the complete and perfect, the 
positive work still to be done. The 
Divine Healer, to whom he is led, looks 
upon him; touches him; compassionates 
him; loves him; sees and feels in this 
blind beggar, his brother, his very self. 
He takes upon himself, for a moment, 
his brother's infirmity, a full sense of 
his deprivation and suffering. But he 
feels only the more strongly for this 
the negative nature of the condition that 
afflicts the blind man, and a sharpened 
sense of the superior knowledge and 
power of the Christ, — the Christ which 
he sees in his brother, under and be- 
neath, over and above, all negative con- 
ditions. Seeing now not a mere blind 
man, but himself, strong, whole and 



206 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



sound of sight, he calls forth through 
the patient's already awakened love 
and trust — which alone make this possi- 
ble — a responsive recognition and mani- 
festation of his oneness with the healer, 
and with the healers thought. Impart- 
ing to that dust of the earth, trained for 
ages in continuous obedience to the 
divine command, his own conscious- 
ness of all light of sun and stars, in the 
moisture of his lips, he placed this 
richly endowed dust upon the eyes of 
the darkened man, and said again as in 
the dawn of creation, "Let there be 
light, " and again, there was light! 

Putting aside any consideration of 
so-called cures by mental suggestion in 
patients under hypnotic control, I have, 
in this case of the blind man, indicated 
a method by which results may be real- 
ized in all mental healing. 

Is there any healing which is not 
mental healing? Did any one ever hear 
of a cure effected, where neither the 
physician nor the patient wanted cure, 
looked for cure, believed in cure, 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 207 



and by the means employed? Even in 
surgery, is it not a common experience 
that precisely the same operation which 
is successful in one case is fatal in an- 
other? — the difference being due plainly 
to ardent desire for life and full confi- 
dence in the ability to undergo the op- 
eration in one case, and indifference to 
living, or a nervous dread of pain or 
death, in the other? The successful sur- 
geon knows his business thoroughly, is 
trained and skillful; but he also believes 
in himself; he is confident, certain, 
cheerful and optimistic. If really wise, 
he imbues his patient with his own 
strong faith. He takes care not to re- 
flect a fear upon his patient; he takes 
equal care that his patient shall not re- 
flect a fear upon him. 

The higher development, in our day, 
of the healing science as a purely meta- 
physical science, calls for more mind, 
fuller recognition of mind, more knowl- 
edge, larger and deeper thought, in the 
healer and in the healed, than ever did 
the school which it is supplanting. The 



208 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



old school practitioner can hardly afford 
to sneer at systematic and scientific heal- 
ing as "irregular," while he himself, in 
an unscientific and unsystematic, hap- 
hazard way, recognizes, in however 
inadequate degree, the power of mind 
in disease, and in its cure. 

Mental healers should remember also 
that we owe the beginnings of the new 
and better knowledge in modern prac- 
tice to those playful experiments of 
English medical men, early in the pre- 
sent century, in curing with imaginary 
remedies, fashionable maladies admit- 
tedly of imaginary origin. When the 
first languid victim of malade imaginaire 
responded to the influence of bread- 
pills, science was furnished a demon- 
stration of the power of imagination in 
inducing and in curing disease, plainly 
capable of indefinite expansion, and now 
slowly but surely revolutionizing the 
treatment of the sick on rational lines. 



CHAPTER NINETEENTH. 



Vision Means Consciousness , Knowledge, 
Power, Life. 

Every disease may be considered a 
blindness, as all consciousness through 
sensation may be considered vision, in 
lesser or greater development. If touch 
was the first sense developed, as there 
is very good reason to believe, not only 
from the writings and traditions of the 
ancient wisdom of the East, but also 
from the evidence furnished by modern 
biological experiment and investiga- 
tion, and if this sense of touch contained 
the potent germ of all the other physi- 
cal senses, it is no less certain that vis- 
ion is the latest and, therefore, the 
greatest of so-called "physical senses" 



2IO THE LIVING CHRIST. 



thus far developed. It contains, in ful- 
ler development, all the qualities of the 
earlier senses, with an added quality in 
their combination found in none of the 
lesser senses taken by itself. This is 
demonstrated on the objective side 
in the marvelous enlargement of human 
faculty made possible by vision and its 
extension through the science of optics, 
bringing near the world of the infinitely 
large and remote, through the telescope, 
and opening up the world of the infin- 
itely little and near through the micro- 
scope. 

Even more marvelous is the demon- 
stration of the supreme importance of 
vision on the subjective side. Man has 
been truly said to stand at the junction- 
point of two worlds, — at the meeting 
place of the objective and the sub- 
jective, the concrete and the abstract, 
the outer world of purely material and 
sharply limited physical sensation, and 
an inner world of comparatively un- 
limited spiritual sensation. It is vision 
that has brought him to this iunction 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 21 1 

point; it is vision that bridges the two 
worlds and makes them one. Imagina- 
tion and fancy, no less than reason and 
judgment, would be inconceivable in a 
blind race. Seeing with the outward 
eye, it is, that enables us to image the 
things unseen. 

How large a part this fact has had in 
the development of religious symbolism, 
we all know. A sacrament is defined 
by the Church as "an outward and visi- 
ble sign of an inward and spiritual 
grace." Its efficacy depends wholly on 
the stimulation to activity of the imagi- 
native faculty. I am told that in 
Catholic countries, instances are not 
infrequent in which the devout wor- 
shipper at the Elevation of the Host, 
during the Mass, or on receiving the Eu- 
charist, distinctly sees and feels the per- 
son of Jesus, the Christ; that the "real 
presence" becomes to her a fact, actual 
and tangible, sensation and experience, 
— not merely the learned abstraction of 
the theologians. She sees spiritually? 
Yes, of course, — but all seeing, all 



212 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



sensing, is sftiritttal. In the experience 
mentioned, the intense, the ecstatic rap- 
ture of the spirit plainly affects the 
body. Its raised vibrations cause the 
blood to tingle and glow, the nerves to 
thrill; it transfigures the face of the 
humblest and homliest peasant girl into 
that of an angel of grace and beauty! 

Vision it is that makes physics and 
mathematics possible. Larger and deep- 
er vision brings to us poetry and art. A 
still larger development of vision gives 
us the Christ-Man, imaging in the 
spirit, and so bringing into outward 
manifestation in his own body or in the 
body of another, his own divine perfec- 
tion of life. This he does even when the 
body is that of the vile leper, the body 
of the blind, the maimed, or the paraly- 
tic; aye, even the body three days dead 
and already decaying of one "that be- 
lieved." 

I say "his own divine perfection," I 
mean, of course, that Jesus saw nothing 
less than himself in those he healed. 
How much of this image was outwardly 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 213 



realized at once by the healed; depend- 
ed on that individual's own perception 
of what was reflected; and this, of 
course, was colored by his own point of 
view. The blind man conceived, felt, 
perceived, in the Christ image, that part 
of his real self — which was not blind. 
That his eyes were opened, was enough 
for him to go on his way rejoicing. In 
the maimed and the halt, the Christ 
image awakened conscious oneness with 
a man who had the use of his legs. The 
realization of even this measure of the 
truth as an idea, image, picture, in them- 
selves, was enough to fill them with 
gladness and to set them dancing and 
singing in new found light, liberty and 
life! 

The measure of the spirit given to 
every one "to profit withal," is all that 
each can hold in his imagination. It may 
be that 

"The primrose by the river's brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him — 
And it was nothing more." 

Still, that is the beginning of its being 



214 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



to him all of beauty and delight that 
the primrose is to the most enlightened 
poet. To the Indians at the great 
World's Fair in Chicago, that dream of 
beauty, "The White City," was simply, 
— "Heap big wigwam." Yet heap big 
wigwam, or the idea expressed in words 
to that effect, once meant the beginning' 
of the glories of the Parthenon. Out of 
darkness, light; out of faint conceptions, 
clearness; the large growth from the 
little. 

Even in "the least of these," the 
Christ in Jesus saw the Christ to be 
manifested sooner or later in every hu- 
man, as in himself. 

In that divine body which is the pro- 
duct of the divine life, all the particles 
in their material substance, as in the 
structural and functional organization 
of that substance, are brought into such 
perfect harmony of sympathetic vibra- 
tion with the commanding, controlling, 
causing energy, — of which they are 
but one mode, and with which they are 
one, — that they obey, absolutely and 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



215 



instantly, the individualization of that 
energy we call will. 

The body, as has already been said, 
(and this is conceded in large degree 
by modern science) is not merely a pro- 
duct of air and sunshine, earth and 
water, moonlight and starlight, wind 
and wave, light and color, sound and 
music. It is all these, and all possible 
powers and phases of these in fullest 
and most intense development. Inhab- 
iting such a body, conscious of its real 
nature, the man of illuminated mind 
does not fear to walk through fire, be- 
cause he has only to arouse, by the will's 
command, a consciousness in the body 
that it is a greater fire. The sun obeys 
in him the sun of suns. He can move 
mountains, because he is the greatest 
of all mountains. He walks the waves 
serenely, because at the touch of his 
feet the fiercest waves feel imposed 
upon them a higher, heavier, mightier 
wave. Hurricane or tornado are to 
him but the caress of a sister, and sweet 
as a zephyr's kiss. He may roll up the 



2l6 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



sea on the right and on the left, that 
his people may pass through the midst 
of it dry shod, because he can part his 
own right hand from his left. 

Lions and tigers crouch at his feet, 
because they are made to feel in him 
the greatest and strongest of lions and 
tigers. The eagle descends from lofti- 
est mountain eyrie and perches upon his 
shoulder in recognition of the King of 
Eagles, as readily as the doves flock to 
feed from the hands of the gentlest of 
doves, and as the poorest and most 
wretched lamb lost on mountain or 
moor, knows his voice and follows it, 
certain of finding care and shelter in 
the bosom of the Lamb of the World. 

Water is turned to wine at the call of 
the Illuminated Man, because there is 
science as well as poetry in the thought 
that "The conscious water knew her 
Lord and blushed." He multiplies the 
loaves and fishes at will, because the 
mighty forces that are constantly in- 
creasing and multiplying every form of 
vegetable and animal life in nature are 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



217 



embodied in him, — are in him and of 
him. As Jove, he hurls the lightnings 
and as Ajax he defies them, — for all the 
lightnings of millions of years are but 
a small part of him. As Atlas, he bears 
the world lightly on his shoulders, be- 
cause all worlds have contributed all 
strength to those shoulders. 

Only the powers inherent in man by 
reason of those essences and qualities 
that belong to him as the most elemen- 
tary of all animals are here indicated; 
the powers that constituted his king- 
dom in the primitive savage; that re- 
side simply in the long derided body of 
flesh. The far larger and grander pow- 
ers that belong to man in his human ca- 
pacity — in his capacity of a living spirit, 
no longer having merely derived life, 
but being Life itself, remain for later 
consideration. In this chapter, it is de- 
sired to emphasize, with all the power 
at command, the error and igno- 
rance of all so called religious teaching 
which purports to lead man into a real- 
ization of his spiritual nature by belit- 



21 8 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



tling, forgetting, and ignoring, the glory 
and grandeur of his bodily nature. If 
men of flesh and blood are to grow into 
more than flesh and blood, they must 
first come into full and clear conscious- 
ness of all that this flesh and blood is; for 
out of it the more is to be grown. The 
greater nature into which man would 
grow must contain the less, which is at 
once its seed and nourishment. They 
must "become as little children"; they 
must realize the powers realized and 
enjoyed by man in the childhood of the 
race. 

O, for the day when that word flesh 
shall be forever redeemed; when all 
flesh shall truly "see the salvation of 
God!" 



CHAPTER TWENTIETH. 



Errors of Asceticism — The Image of God 
in Sex — Fear is the Seed of Weakness 
and Death — Life and Death Not Polar 
Opposites, but Verbal Contradictions. 

Monastic asceticism, with its narrow, 
perverted and unnatural degradation, 
is chiefly responsible for the common 
misunderstanding of the words of the 
Master, in Mark (xii., 21-26,) wherein 
he says: "Those who are worthy of the 
resurrection will remain like the angels 
of heaven. . . . God is not the God 
of the dead, but the God of the living." 

"Like the angels of heaven," here 
plainly means undying — immortal. It 
is also a declaration that in this respect 
living man is a manifestation of eternal 
life as much and as long as he lives in 



220 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



the body. Jesus tells us in these words 
that when (through the resurrection of 
the God in him) man recognizes his 
true nature and its oneness with God, 
he will consciously manifest eternal life, 
as he now does unconsciously. 

The angels of heaven may be sexless; 
man certainly is not so. Therefore, man 
cannot remain what he is not. If the 
angels of heaven are male and female, 
but never mate, never express, exercise, 
use, enjoy masculinity and femininity — 
if they live in a state of perpetual sup- 
pression of those principles and powers 
of their nature which serve for the 
highest expression of the highest hu- 
man emotion, upon which, even on the 
undeveloped animal plane, the perpetu- 
ation, multiplication, extension and ex- 
pansion of the race, with all its growth 
and achievement, to-day depend — it is, 
to say the least, difficult to conceive of 
either the happiness or the reasonable- 
ness of the angelic condition. 

A truer, a more rational and, very cer- 
tainly, a more beautiful conception of the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 221 



nature of the angels than this of the 
pseudo Christian celibate, will be sug- 
gested to the reader in the progress of 
the present study. At this point, it will 
be sufficient to remind the reader that 
in the sexlessness of the angels may be 
found the cause for the limitations of 
those beings — just as in man sex is 
the inevitable and indespensable accom- 
paniment in root and branch, of infin- 
ite and illimitable promise in the spirit, 
and of infinitely progressive per- 
formance in the flesh. For, as we are 
told in the first chapter of Genesis, in 
creating man, "in his own image, in the 
image of God; male and female cre- 
ated He them." 

If man may rise as far above the an- 
gels as he may fall below them, it is 
because as "male and female" he re- 
flects the image of God. Man is not 
"a little lower than the angels," but in- 
finitely higher! He is angel as he is 
animal, — angel and much more. 

The first man, the primitive savage, 
exercised, in a greater or less degree, 



222 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



those powers that belong to him merely 
as the latest and highest evolution of 
form in animated nature. Some savages 
do so still. The Zulu witch doctor, or 
the Zuni medicine man, still cures dis- 
ease, heals wounds, charms serpents, 
controls fire, and commands rain. 

These powers have been lost simply 
through a surrender to negations, es- 
pecially to that most paralyzing of all 
negations, fear. 

In any attempt to indicate how we 
may come into immortalization, we are 
forced, by a realization of our loss, to 
take very fully into consideration this 
one negation of fear, as the great par- 
alyzer and destroyer of man's will; the 
Prince of Darkness and the Father of 
Lies. 

"The fear of God is the beginning of 
wisdom," only when it means a recog- 
nition of the God in us and a refusal to 
fear anything less than that God. "I am 
the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no 
other gods before me." Yet, as all 
other forces of nature and of life are in 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 223 



us in lowest as well as in highest degree, 
cowardice is the manifestation of cour- 
age of the lowest degree; it is a failure 
to fear God, in forgetfulness of His pres- 
ence and His power as Omnipotent, Om- 
niscient and Omnipresent Life itself, and 
with this an abandonment of our own 
higher natures and powers, even on the 
plane of merely highest animalism. 

When a big man shows "the white 
feather" or "turns tail," as we say, be- 
fore the menacing fists of a little man, 
he seems to us a paltry fellow; a fool, 
as well as a coward. In view of what 
has been said as to man's undoubted 
and overwhelming superiority to any- 
thing and everything less than man, 
how unreasonable must appear the 
fear which causes him daily to yield 
even life itself to these little foes, and 
to manifest, in all sorts of bodily dis- 
ease, agonies of apprehension, timidity, 
dread and terror of his own shadow! 
Can we not shame ourselves out of this 
baseless and unreasonable fear? Cer- 
tainly we can, — if we will but recognize 



224 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



that fear of any sort is only an erroneous 
tendency to be overcome — the call that 
wakens the sleeping lion; that it is for- 
getfulness of the God with us, Im- 
manuel. 

Man is afraid of water, perhaps 
through the perpetuation of an image 
of danger formed in the mind years be- 
fore, during some accident, or perhaps 
in a previous incarnation. Avoidance 
of the water does not destroy this fear; 
on the contrary, it strengthens it. His 
right course is to demonstrate the un- 
reasonableness of his fear by accustom- 
ing himself to the water. By wading 
into the water up to the knees one day, 
up to his waist next day, and finally up 
to his neck, he learns to swim. There- 
after, he plunges into the depths fear- 
lessly and joyfully. 

Goethe tells us in his autobiography 
how, when he went to Strasburg, a 
young man, to study, he was much 
troubled by dizziness at great heights, 
and by sickness in the dissecting room. 
He overcame the first erroneous ten- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 225 



dency by going up to the highest win- 
dow in the Cathedral steeple, lashing 
himself to the window-sill and remain- 
ing there looking down, first for a few 
minutes, then gradually increasing the 
time every day, until at the end of three 
weeks he could remain several hours in 
that position without inconvenience. 
In the same way, he overcame the 
sights and smells of the dissecting 
room, by locking himself in it for an 
additional half-hour after the class, 
every day for a week. 

Terror of fire may be overcome simi- 
larly by gradual and progressive train- 
ing of the will through concentration 
of thought towards the manifestation 
in the flesh of the fire vibration — (a high 
vibration, but not the highest flesh 
holds) . To waken the thought in all 
the nerve and flesh fibres, as well as in 
the brain, one might begin by holding 
the hand for gradually extended peri- 
ods in flames of gradually increased in- 
tensity. In the beginning of this experi- 
ment, it might be helpful to dip the 



226 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



hand in some simple fire-proof solution, 
in diluted ammonia, or simply in very 
cold water. 

It ought to be as impossible for man 
or woman to suffer cold as for a polar 
bear to freeze on an iceberg. It is as 
unreasonable for him to surrender to 
the heat as for a crocodile basking in 
the sun to be "under the weather." We 
should be all things to all men, and all 
conditions to all conditions. At first 
we creep; then we walk. At first we 
wade, then we swim. When we real- 
ize the oneness of the body with the 
soul, we shall lose our fear of taking 
our feet from the earth, overcome the 
attraction of gravity, awaken the etheric 
vibration in all the body and fly; as we 
now take our hands from the floor and 
walk, as we take our feet from the shore 
and swim. 

The man who is entirely and abso- 
lutely fearless, can not fail to be true, 
virtuous, wise, healthy and very much 
and in all ways alive. Curious, is it not, 
that this word "always" means also all 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 227 



time? As fear is based on ignorance, 
fearlessness is the fruit of knowledge. 
Knowledge is to ignorance, as light is to 
darkness, — as the truth is to a lie. It 
will help us very much, if we begin by 
recognizing that Knowledge and Igno- 
rance, Light and Darkness, Health and 
Disease, Life and Death, are not polar 
opposites, but verbal contradictions. One 
or the other is true. If Life is truth, 
Death is a lie. If Death is a fact, Life 
is a lie, — that is, a contradiction of trtcth, 
a nothingness. Two and two are four. 
We may in perfect sincerity commit the 
error of judgment expressed in think- 
ing or saying, "two and two are not 
four but three." We may go through 
life, through a thousand lives, believing 
that two and two make only three, and 
expressing that error of judgment in all 
our body, — brain, blood and heart, 
bones, nerves and sinews; in the work 
of our hands and our heads; but we 
can never make it the truth. We can 
never make it less a lie. Every attempt 
to do so, only makes the lie more 



228 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



palpably a lie, — the truth more plainly 
the truth. We have died, — millions of 
people have died, as was imagined, year 
after year, century after century, express- 
ing negation of life. But after all this 
dying, and spite of it all, here we are and 
here they are, — living, moving, breathing 
verities, and, by virtue of the invincible, 
undying energy of absolute truth, at last 
moving out of the shadow into the sun- 
shine! We can say two and two make 
three, we have persisted in saying it a 
very long time, doing the sum over and 
over the wrong way, even though 
the result announced, does not "prove," 
as the arithmetic says. Shall we not 
learn from our failures what we have 
so long failed to learn from the open 
book of Nature and from the words of 
our Wisest Teacher's? 



CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. 



How to Immortalize the Flesh — Attune- 
ment of the Nerves to the Sun, Sea 
and Mountain-Vibrations in Sym- 
pathetic Harmony. 

In every attempt to set down specific 
instructions as to things to think, and 
read and do; a course of study, a scheme 
of training or line of conduct to be 
pursued with a view to the realization, 
in our individual minds and bodies, of 
health and power in ever increasing 
degree; of that command which reduces 
to subjection negative conditions; in a 
word, of immortalization — one is simply 
overwhelmed by the immensity and the 
multitude of thoughts of that fullness 
of meaning as to life, whether in affirma- 
tion or negation, that attaches to every* 



230 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



thing a human soul can think or do. 
All that is possible in the limits of a 
single volume is to sum up what has 
already been set forth, by returning to 
our starting point with sharpened em- 
phasis on the experience which started 
in the authors own consciousness a 
certain vivid and ever-increasing full- 
ness of perception of the truth of im- 
mortal life, in the body as in the soul. 

The largest single object we see and 
know in the external universe is the 
Sun; the next and most impressive is 
the Sea, and next the Mountains. In the 
contemplation of each, we are most im- 
pressed, most "uplifted/' as we say, not 
so much by the largeness of the object 
itself as by the magnificence and ma- 
jesty of the mighty energy underlying 
it and expressed in its form or mode of 
motion. It is not so much the size, or 
apparent size of the sun's disc that 
moves us with wonder and delight, as 
it is the perception, in its glowing 
splendor, of a center of radiant energy 
that sets a world aflame; that, as our 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 231 

lamp, lights up the whole terrestrial 
atmosphere. Recent developments of 
electrical science are correcting the old 
absurdity, taught by even so modern 
and so eminent an astronomer as the 
late Richard A. Proctor, that the sun 
was a great burning globe — like an im- 
mense ball of molten metal, certain, in 
time, to burn out. He ignored the fact 
that the heat and light from such a 
source would be lost by radiation long 
before reaching us through the inter- 
vening ninety-five millions of miles, to 
say nothing of the width of its path. 
The Andes at and below the Equator 
are covered with eternal snow at 
the summer solstice, when that part 
of the earth is nearest the sun. We 
now know also that the depths of in- 
terstellar space, through which this 
light and heat were supposed to come, 
are of inky darkness and of almost in- 
conceivable coldness. The more ra- 
tional view, now coming into general 
acceptance, compares the sun to a great 
dynamo generating by the motion of its 



232 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



body on its axis and in its orbit, — for 
of course, you know that it has been 
settled that the sun does move — a force 
which, through sympathetic vibration, 
is translated into light and heat in our 
atmosphere — being a product, therefore, 
not of the sun alone, but of the sun and 
earth in harmonious co-operation — 
harmonious vibration. 

If we could see that glorious orb of 
day at rest, as it would appear in the 
perspective of its enormous distance, it 
would hardly move us more than the 
sight of a large black stove-lid. 

The sea! at the very words, the 
memory of its awfulness, its might, its 
power, its fascination, embalmed in song 
and story in every land, causes us to 
draw deeper and larger breaths, causes 
our pulses to quicken and our eyes to 
kindle. But those of us who have been 
becalmed in an equatorial sea have an- 
other story to tell. Then, it is not the life* 
but the death, — the awful, sickening, 
paralyzing death of smooth, even, blacky 
oily expanse; it^ ieadness only accented 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



233 



by a long, low, heavy roll, irresistibly 
suggestive of the creep of a great ser- 
pent. Those of us who know the desert, 
the plains or the prairies, and their 
sense-benumbing monotony, can feel 
with fuller intensity the titanesque 
energy that upheaved the sea, that up- 
heaved and upholds the mountains. 

We shall attain eternal life most 
surely by being ourselves. Knowing our- 
selves will come with being and doing, 
thus enabling us to be ourselves in larger 
degree. To be ourselves most truly 
and most fully, we will seek, and we 
will find, every day of our lives, and 
every hour of the day — deeper, larger, 
fuller sense of life. We will be forced 
— most pleasantly and lovingly forced 
— into this ever-increasing life-thought, 
by familiarizing our bodies with that 
particular form or manifestation of life 
outside the body which the body most 
largely reflects, only because it is that 
which the body most largely contains. 
The sun is perceived as the largest 
thing outside of the body of man, be- 



234 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



cause it is a "correspondence" of the 
largest center of energy inside his body 
in the solar plexus; of the largest thing 
in his soul, Eternal Truth! The sun is 
the greatest thing in the heavens to us, 
because the sun is the greatest thing in 
our bodies and in our souls. If we 
would "know ourselves" in a very large 
degree, we must get aquainted with the 
sun in our bodies; give it a chance to 
feel and vibrate in harmony with its 
other half. Sit in the sunshine; walk in 
it, bathe in it. In summer, let our naked 
bodies reflect and be reflected in the 
sun, baring it to the open air, by brook- 
side, or sea-shore, or in wooded glade, 
as Walt Whitman did. In winter, let us 
spend much time in a solarium built on 
top of the house. If we have not 
solaria at home and cannot afford 
to build alone, let us club together 
and build. When we must wear cloth- 
ing, let it be loose and light. Light is 
truth, is life; darkness is falsity, is death. 
Light colors are cooler than dark in 
summer and warmer in winter. Absorb 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 235 



sunshine through every pore, inhale it 
with every breath, drink it with every 
draught, eat it in fullness, and sweet- 
ness and ripe luciousness of fruits and 
nuts. 

Does this seem materialistic? Is it 
not rather the true transmutation of 
matter into spirit? Flesh seeing the 
salvation of God should not be con- 
temned. It is meat expressing the 
life that is more; raiment that shall re- 
veal, not belie, the body's beauty; flesh 
redeemed, spiritualized, glorified; the 
dwelling place of God in every atom. 
That is to say, it is Flesh at last made 
word, as truly and as clearly as, "in the 
beginning," the Word was made Flesh 

" If we have souls, know how to see and use, 
One place performs, like any other place, 
The proper service every place on earth 
Was framed to furnish man with; serves alike 
To give him note that, through the place he sees, 
A place is signified he never saw, 
But, if he lacks not soul, may learn to know." 

— Browning. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND. 



The Master and His Work — A Conver- 
sation and a Journey. 

"Neither be ye called Masters, for one is your 
Master, even Christ. — Mathew xiii., 10. 

"Love is the law," said the Teacher, 
— "the law demonstrated and contained 
in its fulfillment in conscious loving,— 
in consciously loving work!' 

The world of work, the world of care 
and strife; its hardness, its coldness, its 
angularity; its clash of interests reflected 
in clash of sight and sound everywhere; 
its wear and tear, and fret and ugliness, 
all of the prosaic and commonplace, all 
the things ordinarily suggested by the 
word "work," through mercenary asso- 
ciation with money and the struggle for 
subsistence, seemed at that moment 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 237 



very far away. We had been unusually 
quiet during the evening meal, the 
Mother and I. Her intended departure 
on the morrow for a trip across the 
continent, which would separate us 
for many weeks, causing in each a 
depth and tension of feeling that left no 
room for the usual affectionate light 
banter. We would not be sad, although 
there was some sense of gloom and of 
pain in the shadow of the impending 
separation. Each felt that the other 
needed all possible cheer and uplift for 
the work of the coming weeks, to be 
faced by each alone. So the Mother, 
bravely swallowing a little sob, had 
simply said: " After supper, dear, when 
all is quiet, we will sit together for 
strength and illumination." 

And now we were sitting together in 
the pleasant little parlor, which in its 
very atmosphere, as in every object and 
its arrangement, breathed the person- 
ality of the great mother-heart, the re- 
fined taste of the cultivated scholar and 
writer, the deft, artistic touch of the 



238 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



trained home-makers hand. The sub- 
dued rose-tinted glow of the lamp, hid- 
den behind the half-drawn portieres 
that separated our sitting room from 
the library, imparted to everything in 
the room something of its own soft, 
dreamy dimness. Out of the very in- 
distinctness of outer shape, the room, 
and all in it, seemed to have wakened 
into a strangely vivid distinctness of 
spiritual life. The beautiful Madonna 
between the windows and the pot of 
Easter lilies at her feet, the Hermes 
crowning the mantel, the wonderful 
Venus in her corner niche and the jar 
of red roses wafting fragrant incense 
to her nostrils, the splendid Winged 
Victory in her frame over the piano; 
the books in their low cases; old and 
treasured friends, gathered in many 
lands, and holding at call the great 
world's poesy and philosophy; those 
much prized sets of Plato and of Dante 
in their racks on either side the opu- 
lent old mahogony table; the old Persian 
rug that covered the floor; the comfort- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 239 



able easy chairs, the low, broad, restful 
couch with its plenteous pillows on which 
we were ensconced, — even the sombre- 
visaged plaster masque of the Floren- 
tine poet in his panel near the door, — 
all seemed to be as consciously in living 
touch with us as we were with them. 
In all, the smoothly flowing rythmic vi- 
bration of a Beethoven sonata, played 
by the Mother, — before she joined me 
on the couch, — seemed still to rise and 
fall in undulating breaths, like the 
breast of a sleeping girl. 

Strength had come, and illumination 
during the silence, in the visits of dear, 
true, wise friends, who had cheer and 
counsel, enlightenment and strength 
for the Mother's mission westward. 

Then appeared our Teacher. His 
presence breathed a benediction. His 
princely bearing bespoke conscious 
power. Through the free, graceful flow 
and fold of soft silken garments whose 
shimmer blushed pink and golden in 
the lamp-glow, was revealed a figure 
hardly less beautiful in its perfection 



240 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



than was the marvelous harmony of his 
face, — that face of oval outline and warm 
olive hue, seeming to suggest some 
transcendent unfoldment of sun-ripened 
flower and fruit, — delicate in form 
and texture as an orchid, full of color, 
sweetness and flavor as a pomegranate 
and illuminated by great dark eyes, in 
whose depths burned the living light of 
love. The vivid glow of this countenance* 
radiant in every line with love and wis- 
dom, and crowned by a turban of finest 
and whitest linen, was relieved rather 
than emphasized by a flowing silky 
beard of ebon blackness. His presence, 
his atmosphere, and the soft musical 
tones of his voice seemed to transform 
the little "golden room" of our little 
wooden house, in a little western town, 
into an eastern garden, a rose-embow- 
ered and moonlit pavilion in the Vale 
of Cashmere. 

And so it was that, when in the course 
of an exposition and expansion of the 
thought of "Universal Consciousness in 
Universal Love," our beloved Teacher 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 241 



used the word "work" it sounded 
strangely at variance with the dreamy, 
unreal mood in which we had been drink- 
ing in his teaching. It was a little like a 
sudden coming down to earth from the 
heights of poetic vision, an intrusion of 
the bread and butter, matter-of-fact 
world into an Arabian Night's tale. 

"Surely," went on the Teacher, an- 
swering my unspoken thought, "you 
have only to look about you, to see that 
in all manifestations of life, from the 
least to the greatest, work is at once a 
means and an end. Knowledge is tested, 
verified, actualized, only in its applica- 
tion in expression, in action. At the 
same time, this doing brings new and 
larger knowing. It is not enough to 
have noble and beautiful thoughts, feel- 
ings, desires, ambitions, ideals. The 
spirit which is not born in some form, 
dies. Sublimest visions and conceptions 
of poet, musician, painter, sculptor, 
architect, inventor, or worshiping 
devotee, appear to the spiritual percep- 
tion only to be given birth in form and 



242 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

color — material form, to use an inexact 
.nineteenth-century word. If these con- 
ceptions are not embodied in some shape 
of literature or art, some implement or 
machine, instrument or process, appa- 
ratus or organization; these spirits 
wither and die, so far as that individual 
is concerned; and he dies with them. 
The denial of opportunity to express 
the ideal; the active discouragement, in 
fact, of this natural human tendency ac- 
counts for the remarkable poverty of 
the people of this time, and for the liv- 
ing death to which are condemned so 
many men and women. From recogni- 
tion of this truth, (of which there are 
already apparent some faint beginnings 
in your new methods of education), 
must be grown all really strong and 
large individuality, all fertility and pro- 
ductiveness in every line of human ac- 
tivity, all really rich and powerful na- 
tional life — racial life/' 

"To most of us, the compulsion to 
working for a living seems so hard a 
fate," said I, questioningly, "that those 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 243 



who acquire or accumulate possessions 
which place them beyond this necessity 
are regarded as fortunate.'' 

"Yes," responded the Teacher smil- 
ing; "the joys of work and its fuller life, 
are known to very few, instead of being 
a general condition. Instead of work 
being the natural, easy and pleasant 
putting forth of human faculty in genu- 
inely useful and beautiful production, 
as a rose-bush puts forth roses, or an 
apple-tree apples, you labor and toil for 
the means of subsistence, and subsist 
only to labor and toil. The vicious cir- 
cle makes what you call 'life' a grind, 
blinds you to all the glorious possibili- 
ties of real life and causes you to look 
forward to death, either as welcome 
rest, or as passage to another country, 
where you imagine you will really live; 
but where you would really be out of your 
element, because of your failure to see 
and accept in the life you now have, 
the simple but inevitable laws and 
conditions of the heavenly glories to 
which you look forward in another life. 



244 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



Imagine a tree, which spent all its 
energies in simply maintaining its 
trunk and branches at a certain 
shape and size (and that not particu- 
larly large or handsome), failing to put 
out leaf, blossom and fruit, failing even 
to grow more wood; and when it rotted 
down or was cut down, expecting to be 
a more beautiful tree and have a hap- 
pier time in a next life." 

"O, but men are not trees, " said I. 
"Trees are fed and clothed, so to 
speak, without any trouble or effort, on 
their part which might interfere with 
their development and growth and their 
consequent productiveness. Men, how- 
ever, have pressing needs. Food and 
clothing and shelter must be provided. 
These things do not fall from the skies, 
nor sprout spontaneously from the 
earth. We are obliged to work for 
them, concentrating all our time and 
attention, in the first place, on securing 
the 'living/ these things mean for 
ourselves and our families. We do not 
give ourselves up to this grind any 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 245 



longer than we can help; those of us 
who are clever or favored enough to get 
a little something ahead. You surely 
know that the finer graces and beauties 
of life are not ignored among us. We 
have religions, there are our churches; 
we have education, there are our 
schools and colleges; we have literature 
and enjoy reading; and we have music 
and art, as witness our concerts, our 
architecture, our theaters and museums. 
Then there are the delights of travel, 
no longer confined to the very wealthy, 
thanks to our vastly increased and 
cheapened means of transit. Are we 
not broadened by observation of strange 
lands and strange peoples? Do we not 
enjoy the beauties of nature?" 

The smile in the eyes of the great 
Teacher had grown quizzical, as I pro- 
ceeded, so that there was probably 
more doubt than assertion in the ques- 
tion with which I abruptly wound up. 

" About one-half your people never get 
that important 'little something ahead/ " 
he answered with solemn gravity 



246 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



"They consider themselves fortunate if 
they make a bare living from years' end 
to years' end; a large proportion do 
not even succeed that far. Less than 
one in a thousand finds a European trip 
possible. To the large majority, art, 
music and literature are • meaningless 
phrases, when their meaning is not 
wretchedly degraded. Your so-called 
'rich/ for the most part, seek enjoyment, 
or 'entertainment/ not in conscious de- 
velopment of being and doing, — which 
alone holds life — but in wasting away 
what life they have in the gratification 
of foolish vanities; in display or in sen- 
sual indulgence. To cater to this igno- 
rant and vulgar ostentation and this 
foolish 'entertainment/ your Art, your 
Music, your Stage and your Literature, 
are prostituted. 

"Men are trees and something more, 
as well as something less. It certainly 
remains for men to learn the lesson 
of the wisdom of the trees. Consider 
the lilies " 

"Yes, I know the lilies are very 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 247 



beautiful/' I could not help breaking 
in. "God takes care of them; but what 
is the practical application? Men are 
not lilies." 

"They are lilies and something more/ 1 
he responded. "It is with men as with 
lilies. What they are is the result of 
what they do; and it is that you are asked 
to 'consider! They toil not, neither do 
they spin, but they grow. And how do 
they grow? By giving themselves 
wholly and serenely to that duty as the 
first and greatest; knowing that their 
every want must be supplied in the do- 
ing. They live to work, not work to 
live, — certain that the result produced 
will be worth while. Occasionally a 
man or a woman, — one in a hundred 
millions perhaps, — follows this course, 
and the world hails the flowering of a 
genius." 

"It sounds very beautiful," said I, 
somewhat doubtfully, "but it would be 
very difficult to carry out the idea in 
any large organization of men; at least, 
with men constituted as they are at 



248 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



present. Imagine a whole nation of 
men abandoning the making of money 
and concerning themselves only with 
the making of men. And men all mak- 
ing just the things they want to make, 
doing only what they like to do, with- 
out regard to crops or markets, prices 
or profits, wages or dividends!" 

"The Master," calmly remarked our 
Teacher, "has proven the practicability 
of the idea on a large scale, a national 
scale. It is the central idea of life in 
our happy land. That its wisdom is 
amply justified by results, I am sure you 
would be convinced by a comparison of 
our social system with yours. That 
single, simple, sublime sentence, sug- 
gested by contemplating the flowers of 
the field has yielded to us, since its em- 
bodiment in human action, more of 
power, beauty, riches and happiness, 
individually and nationally, than you 
have so far been able to develop from 
the voluminous wisdom of your great 
libraries of law, theology, philosophy, 
politics and economics." 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 249 



"The Master!" Frequently had our 
beloved Teacher thus referred to an- 
other, and always with a deeper vibra- 
tion of affectionate tenderness in 
his voice, a reverent, dignified, grace- 
ful inclination of the head, and an im- 
pressive touching of the tips of his fin- 
gers to forehead, lips and breast. Until 
now, I had never stopped to think de- 
finitely about this "Master." I had no 
clear idea to whom he referred, except, 
in a vague way, that he might be the 
Teacher of my Teacher, the head of a 
Brotherhood of the East, with which I 
mentally connected the Teacher. It 
required considerable effort of the im- 
agination to even recognize the possi- 
bility of a human being greater than our 
glorious Teacher; he who was wiser, 
truer, grander than any other man, we 
had ever known, waking or dreaming. 
Something of awe, as of one more than 
human, probably restrained speculation 
or curiosity. 

Now, one burning desire seemed to 
consume me. Its immensity, and a sense 



250 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

of more than presumption, made me 
fearful of putting this desire into words. 
After several minutes of silent struggle, 
I looked timidly into the eyes of the 
Teacher, and there found such sweetly 
encouraging and comprehending sym- 
pathy, that i became bold to exclaim: 

"Would that I might look upon thy 
Master!" 

"Thou shall behold the Master — this 
time the Master at his work," answered 
the Teacher, taking my hand: "Come!" 

At the touch, at the word, we rose to- 
gether; rose to our feet, rose from the 
floor, through the ceiling, through the 
roof, into the outer, upper air. I had 
not lost sense of my own personality; 
it was indeed more distinct than ever. 
But around and about me, enfolding 
and filling me, I felt the personality of 
the Teacher. It was, as if I had sud- 
denly become clothed with his garments 
of flowing white, with that wonderful 
turban; with the glorious face and fig- 
ure of the man whose hand held mine. 
A new, more rapid, a firmer and a 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 251 



stronger vibration quickened me in 
every atom. What wonder, what 
strange ecstacy was this, wrought in all 
my being in an instant! A warm pres- 
sure of the hand caused me to turn 
quickly to my companion. Had he too 
changed ? No ; he was not less beautiful, 
not less sublime; but in the depths of 
his great eyes I saw reflected, — myself. 
He had taken upon Himself my per- 
sonality, no less than I his. How very 
close we were to each other now! 

"My brother!" I murmured, as one 
newly come to one's own, on returning 
from a far journey. 

"Brother miner he whispered, softly 
and sweetly. And we were clasped in 
each others arms. 

Even thus, we seemed to be moving 
westward through space, with almost in- 
conceivable rapidity. Indeed, the earth 
whirled past beneath our feet with a 
velocity that revealed our motion only 
in the blurring of hill and valley, lake 
and river, plain and mountain, into one 
indistinct, still shadow, — as the shadowy 



252 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



outline of a wheel, revolving at great 
speed, seems to stand still. 

Presently, I sensed the expanse and 
freedom, the coolness and freshness of 
the sea. We overtook, on the broad Pa- 
cific, the sunset which I had watched on 
Lake Mendota, three hours before; 
overtook and passed its crimson glory. 
And lo, we were now travelling from 
evening into morning, not through 
night, but back through afternoon; if 
that can be called afternoon, in which 
the shadows grow less, the sun higher 
in the heavens. I was confused. "Has 
the night passed so quickly and a new 
day come?" I asked my guide. 

"It is always the morning of eternal 
day," he answered, "with those whose 
faces are turned to the East. For us, 
there is no unborn to-morrow, no dead 
yesterday — only a progress towards 
noon-day — the noon-day splendor, 
where you soon shall stand." 

As he spoke, we descended in the 
blaze of an intense, clear, white light, 
beside which the growing light of that 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 253 



afternoon, merged into morning by our 
marvelous aerial course, seemed night 
indeed. For several minutes, my eyes 
were so dazzled that I saw nothing 
but the white light that seemed to fill 
the universe, to the utter exclusion of 
aught else. My glorious companion, 
my Teacher, to me, until now, the most 
substantial and tangible and real form 
in all the world, seemed to have melted 
into this light, to have faded in it, as 
the stars fade before the sunrise. My 
own body, the very solid earth under my 
feet, seemed to have been transmuted 
into this intense, all-pervading fire. 

In another moment, however, my 
ears, my every sense, were entranced by 
music that seemed to fill all the atmos- 
phere about us with most ravishing 
harmonies. Listening in delight, I be- 
gan to distinguish the various voices, 
as they took up the strain, one after 
another, carrying it on and on, in ever 
varying melody. Then I became aware 
that this sea of white light, in which we 
seemed to be immersed, was vibrant 



254 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



throughout, not only with sound, but 
also with motion — the motion of living, 
conscious beings, moving rythmically, 
musically, as they sang. 

Most of all was I impressed by the 
vivid sense now possessing me of oneness 
with all this wonderful new vibration. 
My entire consciousness seemed to con- 
sist in the vibratory life that touched 
me at every point and at every point 
within me found instant and harmo- 
nious response. All I then perceived 
was one with that in me which was 
percipient. 

A touch on the arm roused me from 
the rapt ecstacy that possessed me, and 
I heard a well known and well loved 
voice join in the heavenly harmony; 
heard the words: "Now, brother, thou 
mayest behold The Master!" 

Filled with gladness that I had not 
lost my Teacher, I turned in the direc- 
tion of the voice, and could not repress 
an exclamation of amazement. Seen in 
this light, the beloved face and form 
had become even more beautiful than 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



before, he was now unutterably, 1 would 
have said inconceivably, splendid. 

" How glorious my brother is! " were 
the words that broke from my lips. 

He smiled. " You desired to look up- 
on the Master himself, not merely 
upon his reflection. Look then — look 
with all your eyes, with all your soul, 
that you may carry this moment's illu- 
mination through all the night, through 
all the clouds*of coming years. Look! " 

And he stretched forth his hands 
towards the horizon. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD. 



The Master and His Work, Continued: 
A Vision of the City of Christ. 

"My Father worketh hitherto and I work. — 

John v., 17. 

My sight was by this time becoming 
accustomed to the light; but I had to 
shade my eyes with my hands, and make 
an effort to direct and fasten my gaze 
in the direction the Teacher indicated. 
For now, I looked upon the source and 
center of this intense white light, in 
which all forms and colors seemed lost. 
I saw the central light, from which all 
light was radiated; heard the central 
harmony, from which the all-pervading 
divine music proceeded; felt the perfect 
motion in which all the infinitely varied 
motion about me had birth. 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



257 



"It is the Sun," I said. "Grander, 
more beautiful than I have ever before 
beheld it." 

"The Sun of God and the Sun of 
Man!" said my Teacher. 

1 did not understand him at once. 
Continuing to gaze on what had seemed 
a vast sphere of marvelous luminosity, 
and noting that the radiant beings 
whose every movement produced mar- 
velous harmonies of sound and color, 
accompanied by an exhilarating fra- 
grance, — not only circled around and 
about this sphere, but ever and anon 
passed into or issued from it, I, at last, 
perceived that the seemingly solid 
sphere was itself but the outer radiation 
of light from a center of energy within. 

My vision, growing stronger, followed 
two serene and shining souls into the 
sphere. Never before had I experi- 
enced, never even imagined an atmo- 
sphere of such tremendous, such in- 
tense, and such splendidly and surely 
organized human activity. Without 
friction, without noise or tumult, without 



258 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



glare or glitter, without smoke or dust, 
without fret or worry, every one of the 
millions of men and women within that 
sphere of wondrous light, — from the 
lowest to the highest, from the least to 
the greatest, from the outermost to the 
innermost, — seemed to be filled and 
animated in every atom with high pur- 
pose, with sense of duty, and with the 
supreme elation of achievement, in pur- 
pose fulfilled, duty discharged, by larger 
and larger, finer and finer, more and 
more beautiful creation. 

I was particularly impressed by the 
magnificent sense of freedom exhibited 
everywhere. In the faces and figures 
of these men and women, as in their 
speech and actions, I was made vividly 
aware of a development of individuality 
far beyond that known to us in our 
western world. They were evidently 
pervaded by one great common aim and 
motive, distinctly recognizing in thought 
and action a sense of relation to each 
other. It was plain that this sense of 
relation resulted in an order and 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 259 



organization of life of the most perfect 
and all inclusive nature. Yet nowhere 
else on earth may be seen men and 
women so infinitely varied in all that 
goes to make up individuality in ap- 
pearance, in manner, in powers and in 
expression. Nowhere else have I seen 
men and women who were each so dis- 
tinctly himself or herself. This no- 
bility and splendor of individual life 
and this harmonious social relation were 
clearly and closely connected with the 
great Central City whose myriad build- 
ings stretched away into the dim 
vista on either hand. A city of cities, it 
seemed — for, although an order and 
harmony of grouping and arrangement 
made all seem as one, each splendid 
structure set amidst gardens, lawns and 
flowing fountains, was at the same time 
distinct in itself and part of a small 
group of homes — palaces they were, to 
my eyes. These groups, in turn, made 
up larger groups that were veritable 
cities in themselves, yet gave larger 
beauty to, and received larger beauty 



260 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



from, the complete picture of the great 
city, through the place they filled in the 
tout ensemble. If I were asked to give 
an idea of the size of the city, I could 
only tell you to imagine London and 
Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Venice, Flor- 
ence, Rome, New York, Boston and 
Chicago all put together and spread 
out, so that their structures and streets 
covered as much ground as possible, 
rather than as little. 

Straight before me, between em- 
parked and engardened houses, 
stretched a broad road, leading by an 
easy ascent to a commanding height 
crowned by a magnificent, many pillared 
temple of white marble, in that chaste 
and perfect style we call pure Greek. 
Before this temple spread a great circu- 
lar open space, into which poured thou- 
sands of people from the wide roads 
extending from it to the four points of 
the compass. The movement of these 
bodies of men and women had all the 
precision of a well drilled army; in the 
faces of all there was something which 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 26l 



spoke of unity of purpose. Intelligence 
was no less apparent in the willing obe- 
dience of the followers than in the calm 
confidence of the leaders. There were 
captains of tens, captains of hundreds, 
captains of thousands; but, leader or fol- 
lower, every soul was captain of himself 
or herself. Division after division moved 
forward in perfect order and took up its 
position on the circular terrace. 

There was a moment of absolute still- 
nes, in which my vision seemed to be- 
come still clearer. Again, looking 
straight before me, there burst upon 
my sight such a glory as should change 
the mortal into the immortal, in the 
mere beholding. On a great stone 
seat, built before the middle door of the 
temple, and facing the concourse, I saw 
the Master, enthroned in more than 
royal majesty — the Christ in a glory 
of shining whiteness which seemed to 
radiate from his divine person through 
all the multitude, endowing not only 
the people, but the very stone he sat 
upon, the facade of the temple behind 



262 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



him, the encircling city, the very earth 
of the road, — all the setting of the 
scene, — with his own very life. Not 
less, did he seem to derive his central 
glory from the circumferential life about 
him, which responded to his outgoing 
with as full and constant ingiving of 
sympathetic vibration. The Keystone 
of this Temple of Temples, the Key- 
note of this Harmony of Harmonies, 
his presence in just that place, in just 
that way, seemed to mark in a manner 
most impressive to see, but difficult to 
describe, a oneness of the Christ with 
all about him, and a oneness of ail with 
him, resting on the oneness of each 
with every other. 

It was evidently a special occasion of 
some importance. The King of Kings 
and the Leader of Leaders was listen- 
ing with evident gratification, as one 
after the other stood forth and an- 
nounced in glowing language some 
new achievement, a new poem, a new 
play, a new opera or oratorio, a great 
painting or statue completed, a further 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 263 



triumph in architecture, a new machine, 
a new process in manufacture, an im- 
proved method of transportation; dis- 
coveries in chemistry and in physics; 
why, what is this? The legions of agri- 
culturists telling of new varieties of 
fruits, vegetables and grains, and of 
better methods of tillage! And, as if of 
quite the same importance with the 
poets, artists and scientists, rank upon 
rank of artisans and handicraftsmen 
claimed attention for their spokesmen, 
telling of new and increased production 
and of easier and quicker methods in 
all their several branches! 

The recital was a poem in itself, and 
not less touching and inspiring was its 
reception. It was as if all felt a deep 
and genuine interest in every item. 

And now the last acclaims had died 
out, and, following the direction of the 
Divine Man's glance, I, for the first 
time, noticed that twelve personages, 
six men and six women, evidently form- 
ing a council, were seated on either side 
of him, at a little distance. They were 



264 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



distinguished from their fellows in the 
multitude, not so much by their purple 
robes and stately bearing, as by an 
expression of deep thoughtfulness, as 
of judges considering wisely arguments 
and evidence, and relating these to 
laws and principles. Among them, to 
my surprise, I noted that my Teacher 
had taken his place. Each of the twelve 
briefly summed up the meaning of the 
growth that had been reported, in 
grouped fields of activity, and pointed 
out, in the light of experience, lines of 
further development. 

Then there was a hush of intense ex- 
pectancy, as the Christ leaned forward 
and, in few but eloquent words, testified 
to his pleasure in the substantial accom- 
plishment reported, and the earnest it 
contained of greater things to come, 
adding to the light given by the various 
members of the Council a further de- 
gree of illumination, seemingly designed 
to emphasize, relate and harmonize the 
meaning of their advice and instruction. 

"And now," he said, stretching forth 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



265 



his hands, "our messengers will carry 
the good news to our brothers beyond 
the mountains — letting the light shine 
amidst the darkness, among all na- 
tions." 

As he spoke, a number of shining 
shapes of glorious perfection in face 
and figure; but whom I felt and knew 
from their appearance to be not men 
but angels, arose from the steps of 
the Temple, where they had been wait- 
ing, — most attentive listeners to all that 
was said, — arose, and separating into 
groups passed swiftly through the air — 
one group to the North, a second to the 
South, the third to the East, and the 
fourth to the West. I watched them as 
they disappeared not over, but through 
the great mountains that surrounded us 
on ail sides in the far distance. 

Turning again to the throne, I per- 
ceived two other angels, who had evi- 
dently newly arrived, and who were 
bending reverently before the Divine 
Man. Called on to speak, to my great 
surprise, one recounted in a loud clear 



266 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



voice, certain actions, plans and pur- 
poses of rulers and political leaders in 
Europe and America; new discoveries 
in science, with important developments 
in our current religious and philosophic 
thought, and new outreachings in art 
and literature. This angel had no bad 
news evidently, and I wondered a little 
at this. Could it be that he considered 
the horrors of crime and wrong, of 
wretchedness and poverty, which appal 
so many of us, as really not worth re- 
porting? Probably he had not time to 
include these things. 

A very similar story was that told by 
his companion angel as to growth and 
advancement in the spiritual spheres, 
except that he seemed to clearly mark 
the stages of this growth in each sphere 
by the number of spirits he reported as 
passing, or about to pass, from one 
sphere to another. He closed by an- 
nouncing that seventy of the denizens 
of these spiritual spheres would soon 
come into the City of Christ. 

"Some to remain in a supposed 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



267 



seventh heaven in the spirit world, 
others to receive and carry into the 
outer world, through rebirth, some sem- 
blance of the truth seen by them in 
spiritual vision. " 

The words were spoken softly in my 
ear by my beloved Teacher, who had 
resumed his place at my side. During 
his absence, although standing in the 
midst of the people, they passed me by 
unheeding, indeed, as if they saw me 
not. Now, I seemed to be included 
with the Teacher in graceful, loving 
salutation from all who met or passed 
us. The conclave had already been 
adjourned and the people were dis- 
persing in various directions. 

The Christ had left his lofty seat, and 
was now moving here and there among 
the people, embracing some, exchang- 
ing a few words with others, and almost 
lost in the crowd, as if he had left his 
distinguishing brightness behind him on 
the throne. My desire had been gratified. 
I had looked upon the Master at his 



268 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



work. The time had come for me to 
depart; I felt that my beloved Teacher 
was already waiting to lead me away. 
But a great yearning seized me. It 
seemed to me I would have given life 
itself for a moment's direct personal 
touch with the Man now moving about 
in such easy, familiar fashion among 
his fellows — for one glance from his 
eyes into mine, a touch of his hand, an 
opportunity even to touch the hem of 
his garment. 

And lo! He was close to me, looking 
into my eyes with wealth of tenderest 
love, holding me to his breast in close 
embrace — murmuring in my ear, "A 
little while and ye shall see me!" 

In another instant, he had folded my 
Teacher in his arms — his "beloved dis- 
ciple;" a world of deepest emotion in 
the eyes of each. My splendid compan- 
ion seemed moved to the depths of 
his being by the accents in which the 
Master said, "It is well, beloved!" 

* * * # * 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 269 



Side by side, we passed on down the 
broad road by which we had come. For 
several * inutes, neither of us spoke. 
Presently I was roused by the voice of 
my companion saying lightly, "Your 
Teacher has still a moment to hear and 
answer a few of the thousand questions 
you desire to ask/' 

Yes; there were certainly many things 
that had puzzled me; but it required 
great effort to wake out of the still, full 
peace that passeth all understanding, 
in which my enraptured soul was rest- 
ing; to let the life-long, — lives-long, — 
habit of question and analysis reassert 
itself. 

"Tell me," I said slowly, "tell me first, 
if I am really on earth, on some other 
planet, or in a spiritual realm? This 
must be heaven; I have seen and felt 
beauties and glories which Man has 
always insisted are impossible on earth, 
yet I cannot understand the immense 
interest which seems to be attached 
here to earthly and material in- 
terests and activities. Who ever heard 



270 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



of farms and factories and workshops 
in Heaven?" 

"God is everywhere/' answered the 
Teacher; "but principally (that is, most 
manifestly) in Heaven — in the harmony 
w T hich is his dwelling place. You have 
visited Heaven — the highest of many 
heavens — and it is on earth. Its rulers 
and its people are living men and 
women, — living, for the most part, in 
bodies of flesh and blood, resurrected, 
spiritualized, immortalized. It will help 
you to understand that this City of God 
is also a dwelling place of angels and 
of certain souls who, having lost the phy- 
sical body, abide for a time in spiritual 
or celestial bodies, only, — it will help 
you to understand this if you will keep 
in mind the axiom in mathematics and 
in logic that the greater contains the less. 
The sphere of causation is always and 
everywhere within the sphere of effects. 
When man comes into conscious recog- 
nition of this truth, he will know that 
the outer form of the individual, or of 
society, at any particular stage, is 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 271 



produced by a causative force or prin- 
ciple, contained within this form, infinite 
and illimitable in its power of perpetua- 
tion and expansion — in outward effect. 
Man's external condition will then be 
brought into harmony with constantly 
expanding aims and ideals. His thought, 
his will, his action, will level the brassy 
dead-walls of limitation in thought, re- 
flecting itself in limitation of conditions 
and environment. 

"When you attribute your everyday 
faults and failings to the influence of 
what you are pleased to call 'condition 
and environment/ you blind yourself to 
the very evident fact that this condition 
and this environment are subject to 
man's will and are reflections of it — are 
created by it. Or if you do see this, you 
blame other people for the production 
of unhappy conditions, instead of find- 
ing in their mistakes a summons to the 
exertion of your own will to the crea- 
tion of happier conditions." 

"Let me confess," said I timidly, "that 
that I cannot easily reconcile this fact 



272 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



of the localization of the Christ and 
his kingdom to a particular spot of 
earth, in great measure separated from 
the rest of the world, — so that even the 
boldest of our Asiatic and African ex- 
plorers do not seem to have come upon 
it — I do not clearly reconcile what I 
have seen in this hour with the exalted 
ideas I have held of the Divine Man 
since my eyes beheld Him in that won- 
drous vision of a year ago." 

"Being a man of flesh and blood; be- 
the Man Jesus; and holding this per- 
sonality in greater, rather than in less 
degree for the incarnation in it of the 
Christ principle, the Spirit of Truth, it 
will be strange, I think, if you shall be 
able, reasonably and logically, to place 
him in any other position and relation 
than that in which you have seen him. 
Do you not begin to realize that in 
reaching the conception common among 
you of Christ as a translated and tran- 
scendent being, in a far-off and unre- 
lated heaven, where he is deprived of 
the very humaness — which made him 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 273 



possible to you at all, you have had to 
abandon the solid ground of facts and 
reasoning, and let your mind float in 
misty clouds of unsubstantial mystic- 
ism? 

"The incarnation of Christ in Jesus," 
he went on, "formed alivinglink between 
the highest and the lowest, between 
the seen and the unseen; a living link, 
also, between mind and matter, between 
Spirit and Flesh, between the Abstract 
Ideal and the Concrete Reality; be- 
tween God and Man. The Universe 
visible and invisible, therefore, in his 
country, his kingdom — yet not more 
his country and his kingdom than it is 
the country and the kingdom of man — 
of every man coming into the Christ's 
consciousness of man's true nature, in 
the illumination shed upon it by this 
Sun of Man, this Light of the World, 
which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world. If, as the First Man of 
the Race, our Elder Brother, his per- 
sonality and his office are lifted to a 
great height, he very fully recognizes 



274 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



that it is because he is lifted up, that he 
stands at the top, and that the lifting 
energy is not in his single personality 
alone, but in all mankind. His oneness 
with the energy itself, means to him 
the oneness of all men with him — his 
oneness with all men. Being lifted up, 
he lifts all men with him — all men lift 
themselves with him. The height of a 
mountain is the height of its topmost 
peak, — even if the stones at the base 
are not conscious of the fact. The mag- 
nificent power that raises the sea, wave 
upon wave, is in the least wave, as in 
the greatest; it is made possible only by 
the depth and expanse of all the ocean!' 

"But I had thought of the Christ in 
Jesus transmuting his body into pure 
spirit, in order that he — that is, his essence, 
his love — might be diffused throughout 
the world and find a dwelling place in 
the hearts of all men, — as the light and 
warmth and vitalizing energy of the sun 
is diffused. ,, 

"The light and warmth of the sun," 
was the answer, "would not be diffused 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 275 



very far nor very long, if the concrete, 
material globe you call the sun, were 
to be dissolved into thin air; or if it 
should cease to perform its function, 
its work, its motion on its axis and its 
motion in its orbit. And we would 
cease to receive from that source either 
light or warmth, if the earth should be 
dissolved or cease the reciprocal motion 
on its axis and in its orbit, — the sym- 
pathetic vibration, — the giving on which 
receiving depends in all life, through- 
out the world. 

"The function of the Christ, like that 
of the sun, like that of the earth, like 
that of every form of life, from the tini- 
est seed to the solar system — to man 
(who is more than the solar system) — 
the function of the Christ can only be 
performed in the world of men by its 
concentration in a center of energy, in 
a structure occupying space, in a center, 
specially fitted at once for the exercise 
of its special function, and for the gen- 
eration of the energy that exercise de- 
mands. That structure, that center, is 



276 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



found in the personality of the Man, 
Jesus — and that personality, in its union 
of the human and divine, is simply in- 
conceivable apart from a particular 
human body of flesh and blood. Com- 
ing clearly to this point, I do not think 
it will be difficult for you to realize that 
this living personal man of flesh and 
blood must have a home, and that this 
home must be more than 'a tent in 
some vast wilderness/ it must be a 
home in accord, in harmony, with his 
character and powers, his personality 
and office. The king may visit the 
poorest hut in his kingdom, but he is 
housed when at home in the proudest 
palace his kingdom can build. And a 
palace requires a city as much as a 
king requires a palace. 

"In spite of what you deem our isola- 
tion, there is a very full and constant 
intercourse between our people and the 
people of all other lands. If you know 
less of us than we do of you — just as 
the English know much less of America 
than the Americans know of England — 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 277 



it is not our fault — not altogether our 
fault, at least." 

"I was glad to see," said I, with a ris- 
ing of old revolt against irrational re- 
ligion, "that the King does not remain 
forever on the great white throne, and 
that the heavenly harmonies produced 
by the saints and angels are something 
more than the inane and indolent, 
stupid and selfish amusement, pictured 
by theologians as the reward of the 
righteous. On the other hand, I am too 
good an American to reconcile my 
mind easily to monarchical ideals and 
systems in government. A democracy 
seems to be more enlightened and ad- 
vanced than a monarchy." 

An instant's shadow of pain passed 
across the face of my companion. 

"Men see at first as through a glass 
darkly; later the vision clears," he said, 
with a reminiscent air. "Peter, for in- 
stance, having repeatedly come into 
our kingdom, in the spiritual body, has 
each time burned with greater fervor 
and zeal to actualize truth in his church 



278 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



among men in your world, and to that 
end has nobly surrendered and sacri- 
ficed the delights of existence among 
us by seeking rebirth in the flesh. In 
his latest incarnation, he has carried 
the Roman church forward in this di- 
rection in a marvelous degree. True 
democracy, being the latest evolution in 
political forms, must include all that is 
best in the earlier forms, from which it 
is evolved, — for I suppose, of course, 
that 'Democracy' means something more 
to you than the primitive clan-gathering 
or folk-meet, or town-meeting. When 
democracy becomes a levelling up f ' 
rather than a levelling down, the sov- 
ereignty of every citizen is recognized 
in the sovereignty of the first citizen. 
You have seen the Christ in the exer- 
cise of his office, in his highest capacity 
as Center of our Circle. Yet, that 
which you have seen is only a brief 
bringing together and summing up of 
the results of the week's work, — what 
you might call a Sunday service. 

"Jesus is not chained to the throne on 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 279 



the one hand, nor to' his carpenter's 
bench on the other. For, of course, he 
is an active working member of the 
Carpenter's Guild, the most expert and 
efficient of our workers in wood, and 
delighting in the exercise of his skill 
and strength in the fashioning of beau- 
tiful cabinets, chairs and tables out of 
woods, rare or common. Among us, 
design and execution are often united. 
Jesus is, how r ever, architect not only of 
his own constructions, but also at times 
for others. He is also among our chief 
orators, and spends much time in the 
fields and gardens. Aside from these 
occupations, he has, of course, his own 
particular and personal life in his own 
home, surrounded by his own family, 
and enjoying the company of his chosen 
society, whether as graceful host in his 
own house, or as welcome guest in the 
home of a friend. How otherwise could 
he truly know and be known by his 
friends? It is the same with every man 
and woman in this land, from the 
greatest of all, who is the servant of all, 



280 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



to that happy lad, milking his cow and 
singing a melodious accompaniment to 
the swish of the milk dropping into his 
pail. He is happy and growing, be- 
cause he feels that, in what he is now 
doing freely and and with all his heart 
and mind and soul, — so doing his best, 
— he is contributing not simply to his 
own support or that of his immediate 
family, but what is much more, to the 
glory and beauty of his whole city. He 
milks and cares for the herd — or helps 
as one of those sharing that work — 
knowing that in so doing he is helping 
the poet, the painter and the architect 
in their work, helping to lift to higher 
glory the Christ himself! And all 
above him, up to the Divine Man, also 
recognize this, and are happy in giving 
the boy in return all the help and hap- 
piness and beauty they can give. Long 
since, we solved the problem of assur- 
ing material subsistence, — of certain 
and ample provision of food, clothes, 
and shelter for all. Although we have 
not ceased to think about and arrange 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 281 



for finer and more abundant and 
varied food, more and more beau- 
tiful clothing, and more and more 
perfect habitations — more picturesque 
architecture in structure and land- 
scape — and in connection with these 
things, of course, of the further de- 
velopment of art, science and indus- 
try, — our chief concern and our best 
efforts are now directed to devising 
more perfect educational methods. It 
is not for ourselves alone, you know, 
but for all the race." 

The Teacher ceased speaking. He 
had taken me through a large part of 
the city in such a way that I had, while 
listening, been able also to take swift 
but sure note of what was going on 
about me in all directions: — that is, of 
the daily life of the people of the city, 
inside and outside of the various build- 
ings, — until at last, reaching the out- 
skirts of the city, we paused in a field 
beside a boy milking a cow and who, 
without interrupting his song, or his 
work, nodded to us gaily, his big blue 



282 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



eyes lighting up with a smile of glad 
recognition, as the Teacher kissed his 
hand to him. What a picture it made 
in that glorious landscape! It was a 
striking contrast, perhaps, with the 
wonderful scene we had witnessed at 
the other end of the road — but it some- 
how seemed to belong to it. Musing 
thus, still feeling the Teacher's arm 
around my shoulders, a soft delicious 
drowsiness crept over me, my eyes 
closed and my body seemed to sink 
down slowly and easily as on a couch 
of eider down. 

% % # * * 

The red-shaded lamp behind the por- 
tieres was burning low and the bell of 
the little clock on the mantel was ring- 
ing out one solitary stroke, when I 
opened my eyes in the dear old room. 
I was lying at full length on the com- 
fortable couch, and the dear mother 
was sitting in her favorite low rocker 
near me, holding my right hand in both 
hers. There was a suggestion of 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 283 



relieved anxiety in her voice, as I sat 
up rubbing my eyes. 

"It is now an hour past midnight/' 
she said. "A little more than an hour 
since, I supposed the Teacher had con- 
cluded his instruction for the evening 
and I said 'good-night/ But, instead 
of bringing in the lamp as usual, you 
calmly stretched yourself out and lay 
flat on your back on the couch, com- 
pelling me to change my seat. Then 
you went sound asleep. You became 
motionless, almost rigid; your breathing 
was hardly perceptible. I should have 
become alarmed and tried to rouse you, 
if you had not begun speaking. I judged 
from your questions, that you were still 
conversing with the Teacher; but you 
failed to repeat his answers, as you do 
when awake. From scattered exclama- 
tions I caught, it seemed as if he were 
showing you some splendid vision. 
Your voice had a strange, far-away 
sound, as speech heard over a tele- 
phone. It was as if your words came 
from the lips of a statue — so still were 



284 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



you. A feeling that I had to watch and 
wait and hold your hand, kept me from 
falling asleep. I'm so glad you have 
come back. Now tell me all about it; 
where you have been, and what you 
have seen? I'm dying to hear." 

"I've been beyond the Gates of 
Gold," said I jumping up and taking 
the lamp, "and I've seen the Great 
White Throne. It's all very true; yet 
very different from what we have sup- 
posed. But I'm not going to keep you 
up any longer to-night, telling you 
about it. You need sleep, — to-morrow 
you shall hear." 

$ 4fe # * * 

And this is the tale, — a part of the 
tale, — of that midnight vision of the 
mid-day sun that next morning was told. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH. 

Christ's Second Coming — Reasons for a 
Personal Reappearance of fesus to all — 
Adventist Expectation and the Messi- 
anic Tradition — The Shaker Idea and 
the Passing of Sinful Generation. 

"Ah! Life is delicious; well to live long, and 
see the darkness breaking, and the day coming! 
The day when soul shall not thrust back soul 
that would come to it; when men shall not be 
driven to seek solitude because of the crying 
out of their hearts for love and sympathy. Well 
to live long and see the new time breaking. 
Well to live long; life is sweet, sweet, sweet!" 

— Olive Schreiner. 

"Christ is risen indeed !" Christ is 
here with us now. He who is the Res- 
urrection and the Life has come; is a 
present, living reality to all who have 
reached a consciousness of the truth 
presented in these pages; the truth of 



286 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



the Christ's actual, present existence on 
this earth in the perpetuated person- 
ality, and in the immortalized flesh and 
bones, of the man Jesus. Christ has 
already come, come to abide forever! 

Deliverance from the bondage of sin 
and death, for us, is no longer only an 
eagerly longed for and patiently awaited 
future event, anticipated through faith 
in spoken or written prophecy. It is, 
here and now, a truth of which we have 
most lively realization. To us, has come 
a clear recognition of the Divine Man's 
absolute triumph over Death, not 
merely for forty days, but for nearly 
nineteen centuries, and so forever. 

The Seed of the Woman has crushed 
the Serpent's head. Man no longer is 
condemned to eat his bread in the 
sweat of his brow; woman no longer 
need bring forth children in sorrow and 
travail. 

In the redemption of the body and in 
the salvation of the flesh of the first 
man of the race who came into full 
consciousness of his true powers as Son 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 287 



of God and Son of Man, through abso- 
lute recognition and realization of his 
oneness with both God and Man, the 
oneness of God and Man with him, — the 
bodies of all men are redeemed, the 
flesh of all is saved. Our eyes are at 
last opened to the fact that the Sun is 
shining — that there is light. And, be- 
cause we have come from darkness into 
light, we know that all men shall come 
into the same light; that the eyes of 
the blindest must in time be opened. 
We know that the light shineth even in 
the darkness; we know that, although 
the darkness comprehendeth it not, the 
light into which the densest darkness 
is at last transformed, will know the 
light, and become light. 

And yet for all who have entered into 
that Kingdom of Heaven, which is 
within every man; especially for all who 
have seen or dwelt in that externaliza- 
tion of this Kingdom in the City of 
Christ, — whether of those now dwelling 
there, or those reincarnated in the 
outer world, lights amidst the darkness, 



288 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



or of those "some" who standing by the 
side of Jesus in the beginning of his 
mission have "not seen death," but who 
in immortalized bodies, serve at once 
as citizens at home in the Eternal City, 
and as ambassadors abroad, wherever 
and whenever a human soul opens to 
receive them; for all unto whom the 
light is come, — there is sharpened and 
intensified sense of oneness with the 
millions still dwelling in darkness, 
with the millions blindly groping with 
closed eyes, and consequently groaning 
in the sorrow and travail of a painful 
"working out of their own salvation," — 
failing to take and use the great victory 
and its prize, won for them by Christ 
when he conquered death. His victory 
was not merely that of a single man, 
but of Man. Its fruits are for all. 

In one sense, however, we look for- 
ward to a second coming of Christ. If 
he has not yet come to millions of men 
and women whose eyes are closed, and 
with whom we are one, he has not 
yet come to us. Because he has come 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 289 



to us individually, we know he must 
come to all. As the incarnation of the 
Christ in an individual is prophecy 
and promise of the incarnation of the 
Christ in the race, so it is plain to us 
that the visible and tangible appear- 
ance now of the Divine Man in such 
wise that one person recognizes or sev- 
eral persons recognize his presence, is 
the inevitable prelude to his appear- 
ance otherwise at another time, in which 
the race shall see and recognize him. 

"And in the twinkling of an eye, all flesh shall 
know me, that I live." 

The perception and recognition of 
the Living Christ in the Living Jesus, 
by various persons at various times, is 
part of the process by which humanity 
as a whole has been and is being pre- 
pared to distinctly perceive his presence 
— with all the glorious uplift that growth 
in racial consciousness means. For, I 
suppose, it is a fact beyond need of 
demonstration that when mankind 
really sees and recognizes Jesus the 



2gO THE LIVING CHRIST. 

Christ, and that he lives, we will all have 
come into conscious recognition of our 
oneness with the Divine Man and into 
conscious possession and exercise of 
the Divinity of Humanity, with all the 
advance and elevation of human ideal 
and expression, achievement and pro- 
duction, fullness and joy of living that 
such conscious power involves. 

The beginning of the thousand years 
reign of Christ, — that Millennial Age so 
long heralded by prophets and poets — 
can only begin with a lively sense in the 
heart of every one of us that the Christ 
is incarnated in all in its incarnation in 
our Elder Brother; that we are reign- 
ing with that Elder Brother, whose 
personality is lifted into visible leader- 
ship and kingship only by virtue of the 
Christ principle, which is equally in all 
of us as in him, and by which the one- 
ness of each with all, and all with each 
is most perfectly manifested. With the 
"coming" of Jesus, the Christ, to men 
on earth, it will be apparent that we 
look for a coming of men over all the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 291 



earth into clear and absolute conscious- 
ness of Jesus the Christ's actual pres- 
ence here now — of his continued pres- 
ence on earth among men ever since 
he rose from the tomb on that first 
Easter morning 1,896 years ago, — 1,896 
years ago, more or less. As a conse- 
quence of this growth in human con- 
sciousness, Jesus, the Divine Man, will, 
it is believed, by a distinct personal act 
at one particular time complete and 
confirm the racial recognition of his 
oneness with all, by making a personal 
appearance to all; this time not in the 
character of a simple Galilean peasant, 
but in the character and office of the 
Christ, lifted to the acknowledged 
headship of the human race; Light of 
the World and King of the World. It 
has required the cyclic period of two 
thousand years for the development in 
the human consciousness of anything 
like a clear conception of Christ's real 
character and office. 

"King of the Jews" was the utmost 
honor his first followers could imagine. 



292 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

Later he was separated from humanity 
altogether and worshiped as a God 
whose very humanity was denied. It 
will not seem strange or miraculous 
when he shall come "as lightning shineth 
from the East unto the West," nor 
that he shall come through the air as in 
a cloud, attended by a great company 
of the redeemed, and heralded by the 
trumps of angels. We shall feel and 
understand that every one of us con- 
tributes to the power and glory thus 
manifested; that even the least of us 
lives in that resplendent personality, 
and that personality in us. We shall 
know, every one of us, that when we 
wish to encircle the globe with the ra- 
pidity of light, we may adopt the same 
method of traveling, or that if we do 
not, it is only because we have not de- 
veloped the ability to exercise our in- 
herent human powers; as we now com- 
prehend ourselves in regard to navigat- 
ing a balloon, sailing a boat, or riding a 
horse. In regard to the time of this 
second appearance, there has been a 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 203 

great deal of curious calculation and 
prediction based on various interpreta- 
tions of the Prophets and the Book of 
Revelations and other scriptures, re- 
garded in the light of abstract mathe- 
matical problems. It is wonderful how 
figures can apparently be made to con- 
firm and bear out almost any precon- 
ceived idea! As many of us know, a con- 
siderable sect known as the Millerites, or 
Adventists, in this manner decided that 
the end of the world was to come about 
forty years ago. Many of them went so 
far, in view of this anticipation, as to 
generously give away all their worldly 
possessions, for which they would have 
no further use, to the unbelieving 
(whom acceptance of the gift would 
help to damn) ; donned their white as- 
cension robes, and mounted to the roofs 
and hill-tops, that they might be caught 
up into the clouds to "reign forever 
with Christ in glory," and to look down 
for all time with gruesome satisfaction 
on the burning up of the rest of us 
poor unlucky ones who shall not happen 



294 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



to be included in the 144,000 of the 
elect! 

They were really disappointed when 
this program was not carried out on 
time; but it was explained by the lead- 
ers that there had been a little mistake 
in the figuring somewhere, and that the 
end would come five years later. And 
when it did not happen then, they post- 
poned the event to a later date. After 
the third disappointment, they ceased to 
be definite about the date. They have 
taken off their ascension robes and laid 
them away for future use. In the mean- 
time, their usual earthly avocations, are 
resumed and with them the acquisi- 
tion and accumulation of those treas- 
ures that are the prey of robbers and 
rust, of moth and mildew. 

This, is of course, the reductio ad ab- 
surd um, of that emphasis placed in the 
modern church on the letter that kill- 
eth rather than on "the spirit that 
maketh alive. " A further and later 
development in this direction is given 
us in a recent publication by C. T. 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 295 



Russell called "Millenial Dawn," which 
is having very wide circulation, to judge 
from the announcement, "470th thou- 
sand/' on the title page of the last edi- 
tion. The work fills three large vol- 
umes, and is illustrated with charts. In 
it, the author learnedly sets forth the 
biblical evidences that, in his opinion, 
mark the year 1914 as the year of 
Christ's Second Coming. He holds 
that the Gospel Age ended and the 
Millennial Age began in 1878; the Ber- 
lin Congress of that year marking the 
closing of the old and the opening of 
the new era. The thirty-six years in- 
tervening, he says, are only the lapping 
over of the old on the new; a period 
which is to see disintegration and de- 
struction; convulsions and cataclysms 
in nature and in society, and to be filled 
with terrors and horrors, wars and ru- 
mors of war, plague and pestilence, — -a 
very violent and bloody separating 
of the wheat from the chaff. In the 
midst of this woe and slaughter, among 
other things, the Jews are to be gath- 



296 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



ered together in Palestine, and their 
Kingdom literally restored! 

Much the same sort of dreadful 
ness and gloom, much of the same fiery 
proclamation of the coming of the Day 
of Doom, of the fiery and awful wrath 
of an incensed and angry Jehovah, 
dealing widespread death and destruc- 
tion and saving the elect few who shall 
set themselves apart from their fellows, 
or be separated, for their superior sel- 
fishness, shrewdness and cunning in 
"seeking salvation, " pervade nearly all 
the literature on this subject. Even the 
writings and addresses of an eminent ex- 
Professor of Mathematics at Yale dwell 
with much insistence on an interpreta- 
tion of prophecy concerning the coming 
of the Son of Man, which to every right- 
minded and true-hearted man and 
woman must mark that event not as a 
day of joy and gladness, but one of the 
blackest sadness and sorrow. For all 
Christ's true followers, a personal elec- 
tion and salvation purchased at the price 
of the destruction and damnation of mil- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



297 



lions, of a majority, — of "even one of the 
least" of our brothers — would be dearly 
bought. Rather should all choose to go 
down with them to the lowest hell. The 
lowest hell would be more truly heaven 
to us than would the society of any com- 
pany of slick and smug "saints," chuck- 
ling with self-satisfaction on having 
managed to don their ascension robes 
in time, and congratulating themselves 
that they were "not as other men!" 

The Jews who rejected Jesus still 
look for the coming of a Messiah, of a 
heaven-sent leader and deliverer. Much 
of the present day Adventist expecta- 
tion may undoubtedly be traced to the 
influence of Jewish thought, as contained 
in the books of the Old Testament. 
Even more remarkable than the re- 
jection of Jesus by the Jews, is the fact 
that in spite of the perpetuation of this 
messianic expectation through all the 
nineteen hundred years since that time 
— an expectation which, even at this 
day, sheds a halo of mystic anticipa- 
tion about the birth of every Jewish 



298 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



boy — this race, with all its distinctive 
tribal cohesiveness, its vitality of re- 
ligious forms and organization, its mar- 
velous continuity of tradition and his- 
tory, has not in all this time produced a 
great leader! 

During the Anti-Semite agitation in 
Germany a few years ago, Dr. Felix 
Alder delivered a lecture in which he 
showed conclusively, that there is really 
no such thing as a Semitic race now ex- 
isting as a people separate and apart 
among the populations of Europe and 
America. The Semitic peoples are so 
thoroughly mixed with Celt and Teuton, 
Greek and Cossack, Aryan and Latin, 
Slav and Saxon, that it would be diffi- 
cult to find in Europe or America a 
single family of pure Semitic blood. 

It is true that, even in the mixed races, 
we find the Jewish element dominant 
and manifesting itself in a tenacious 
holding to customs and beliefs, habits 
and characteristics that have come to 
be associated, in the popular mind, es- 
pecially with the Jews. This, however, 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 299 



is fully accounted for by the centuries 
of persecution and social ostracism in- 
flicted in Europe on those of Jewish 
blood or belief. Such a course naturally 
intensified religious and racial zeal, and 
with it a sense of separateness. 

In America, a broader and happier 
policy has prevailed. As a result, the 
clannishness and other characteristics 
that set the Jews apart as "a peculiar 
people," are yearly becoming less pro- 
nounced. The inter-marriage of Jews 
and Christians is frequent. In every 
field of our modern life, in commerce 
and banking, in art and literature, in 
politics and the professions, the Jews 
are making their way and winning dis- 
tinction, finding especially satisfactory 
and honorable place in our great 
American amalgamation of all the 
races and religions of the earth. 

It may be that the vulgarity of the 
newly rich speculator or trader is more 
pronounced, and therefore more offen- 
sive when the nouveau riche is a Jew. 
This, may be traced to the fact that 



300 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



class traits or peculiarities are all inten- 
sified in the Jew. If he may be more 
vulgar than the vulgar Christian, he 
may also be more polished and refined 
than the polished Christian. We all 
know of Jewish families among the 
professional classes, or in the second or 
third generation of successful mer- 
chants, whose true distinction is the 
charm of very genuine culture, courtesy 
and grace. 

There are two further theories re- 
garding the second coming of Christ, 
that call for brief notice, before passing 
on. One is presented in a little book 
called "Christ Came as Promised, " by 
John H. Cragin, which is ably written 
and has had considerable vogue. The 
other is the theory of the Society of 
Believers in the Second Coming of 
Christ, commonly called the "Shakers." 

In the book mentioned, the author 
attempts to show that Christ's prophecy 
was fully accomplished in the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem by the Romans about 
seventy years after the Crucifixion — 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 301 



that is, before the passing away of the 
generation of people then in its child- 
hood. According to this theory, Christ 
"came in spirit," and was the impelling 
force, bringing down the destroying 
Roman soldiery upon the sacred city, 
thus finally crushing out the last ves- 
tiges of Jewish nationality, as a penalty 
for the sins of that people. 

The Shakers give a different inter- 
pretation to the word generation in 
Christ's prophecy. They hold that it 
refers not to a period of time, but to the 
association of the sexes in reproduction. 
Therefore, they conceive that Christ's 
words here call for an utter abandon- 
ment of marriage — of the sexual rela- 
tion — by those who would live the Christ 
life in "the regeneration." Celibacy thus 
becomes the corner-stone of the Mil- 
lenial Church, as the Shakers call their 
religious organization. The prophecy 
of Christ's second coming is held to be 
fulfilled in the appearance of Ann Lee, 
and in her institution of an organized 
body of people whose lives are ruled 



302 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



by the principle of a total sacrifice and 
surrender of generation, or what they 
call "the generative life," before gen- 
eration has altogether "passed away," 
(as they believe it will pass) from the 
rest of the world! 

I think the Shakers have come very 
near the truth in their understanding of 
the word "generation" in this text. 
Whatever their mistakes, we find in this 
interpretation a suggestion which throws 
much light on its real meaning. 

Christ, in this important passage, 
does not say, "Generation shall not pass 
away." What he says is: "This genera- 
tion shall not pass away." He thus 
plainly refers to one particular method 
of generation, rather than to all gen- 
eration, — that is, to the particular 
method of generation — the marriage — 
of that time and country, its theory and 
practice, its nature and results. This 
marriage was, in all essential particu- 
lars, what we would now regard as a 
system of slavery. In it, the woman 
was sold into degrading subjection to 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 303 



the will and passion of the husband, 
who might divorce himself from her at 
will; but whom she could not divorce 
under any circumstances. In token of 
her subjection, she was required to 
shave her head and clothe herself in 
black on her wedding day. 

We can easily understand now, that 
it is only with the passing away of this 
sort of generation that the Son of Man 
shall come into his Kingdom. The Son 
of Man is also Son of Woman, and his 
sonship depends on a parentage grow- 
ing out of a free union of equals — not a 
union of master and slave; but a union 
recognizing and expressing the equal 
humanity and equal freedom of the 
male and female man. 

When Jesus said, "This generation 
shall not pass away, until all these 
things shall be fulfilled," he clearly im- 
plied that it should pass away after the 
fulfillment of his prophecy. Its passing, 
therefore, has a close connection with 
Christ's second coming. If what he 
called "this generation" has not yet 



304 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

entirely passed away, we may certainly 
congratulate ourselves on the realiza- 
tion of its passing in so large a degree 
that its final disappearance may be 
looked for in the near future. With 
the development of nobler ideals re- 
garding marriage, — ideals embodying 
Justice, Freedom and Truth in the 
nuptial union, — we are preparing the 
way for a higher race born of higher 
parentage. The first right of every hu- 
man being is to be well born. This is, 
as yet, the exception; but the day is 
coming when it will be the rule. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH. 



The Signs of the Coming of the Son of 
Man. 

As of old, men ask for a sign, and, as 
of old, they are blind to the signs all 
about them. They perceive in the 
heavens the indications of fair weather 
or of rain, and of the passing of winter 
and the coming of spring; but they dive 
deep into abstruse learning, into He- 
brew and Greek and mathematics, for 
wisdom to read new meanings out of 
old books. They thus exalt into en- 
tirely unwarranted prominence the 
gloomy pessimism of those prophets 
who spoke amidst the fear and struggle 
of humanity's dark night; the terrified 
cries of the childhood of the world, in the 



306 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



long since ended reign of the Prince of 
Darkness, the Destroyer Death; the 
moaning and wailing of weakness and 
blindness before the coming of the 
Light of the World, the Prince of 
Peace! 

We shall not set a date for the 
visible appearance to all men of Christ 
in his glory, which we expect. The 
author is not a prophet, he is not versed 
in the lore of the Egyptians, or of the 
Hebrews, and Greek is Greek to him. 
The time, it is believed, is at hand; and 
the signs which mean this nearness of 
the fullness of time to us, are the signs 
seen by a child sitting in the sunshine 
of the living present, rather than those 
which our learned sages have unearthed 
by delving in the darkness of the dead 
past. 

In the first place, the signs of the 
coming of the world's new birth, of 
Humanity's most glorious spring-time, 
of the millenial Easter morning, are 
bright and beautiful and joyous signs; 
gladdening verdure of field and plain, 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 307 



blossom and bloom everywhere; sweet- 
est fragrance of flower and herb, rip- 
pling of sun-lit waters; a light and 
warmth on sea and land, in which the 
cold and darkness of winter passes from 
memory as if it had never been. The 
annual festival of nature finds its per- 
fect analogy in the present condition 
of Humanity. Never before in the 
world's history, have men recognized 
and felt and manifested so large a sense 
of universal brotherhood as at present. 
Never before have the peoples of the 
most widely separated and diverse na- 
tions of the earth been drawn into 
such close and tangible connection and 
relation. Never before in the world's 
history have men presented the sub- 
lime spectacle, visible on this American 
Continent to-day, of men of differing 
races, religions, nationalities, languages, 
aims, interests and ideals, avocations 
and pursuits, meeting, fraternizing, co- 
alescing in one splendid nationality; a 
nationality that is more than a nation- 
ality, — a federation of sovereign states* 



308 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



each strong in itself and stronger in its 
union with each and every other — 
plainly the model and outline of that 
larger combination into which the na- 
tions are consolidating — that combina- 
tion soon to be realized. 

"When the war drum throbs no longer, and the 
battle flags are furled, 
In the Parliament of Man; the Federation of the 
World!" 

When Alexander III. of Russia died, 
Lord Rosebery eulogized him as the 
one man whose single strong will had 
for sixteen years preserved the peace of 
Europe. Grave were the forebodings 
expressed as to the probabilities of the 
nations, released from that restraint, 
flying at each other's throats. Within 
a year after the Czar's death, the na- 
tions were sending representatives to 
St. Petersburg to participate in the 
peaceful pageantry of his successor's 
coronation. 

The will of one serene old woman, 
England's Queen, it is that to-day 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 309 



suffices to quell the fighting passions of a 
world in arms. That martial genius, that 
katabolic spirit and impulse which, un- 
til now, has played the leading part in 
the human tragedy, finds its latest, full- 
est and most perfect embodiment in 
the young "War Lord of Germany." 
But beneath his grandmother's frown, 
his war-like posing and prancing, prat- 
ing and proclaiming, assume the ap- 
pearance of mock heroics. The world 
laughs at him as at a boy in petticoats 
astride a wooden horse and brandish- 
ing a tin sword. 

The duello between nations is going 
the way of the duello between individu- 
als. Universal disarmament is being 
discussed, not merely as a sentimental- 
ist's dream, but in the councils of states- 
men as an economical and political ne- 
cessity, — the cost and burden of war 
establishments having increased so 
enormously that Europe is already 
compelled to choose between general 
disarmament and general exhaustion 
and destitution. A recent exchange of 



3IO THE LIVING CHRIST. 



insults between the two great branches 
of the Anglo-Saxon race, which, had it 
occurred a few years ago, only blood 
could have honorably wiped out, has 
had its most decided and important re- 
sult in the emphatic assertion of the 
calm, common sense of England and 
America, and in the advance to distinct 
and immediate practical importance of 
the demand for an international tribunal 
of arbitration. 

We have seen the last of war, I think. 
If there should be another, it will cer- 
tainly be a short one. Out of it, peace, 
final and universal, will arise. 

For the first time in human history, 
slavery as an institution has been ut- 
terly abolished throughout the civilized 
world. Freedom is recognized in all 
our political forms as a human right; 
and with freedom has come recogni- 
tion and provision throughout the 
world for universal education, making 
the light and learning, so long the privi- 
lege of the few, the rightful possession 
of the many, — the indispensable accom- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



paniment of that citizenship, which has 
also come to be an almost universal 
condition. Peace stands for Love, as 
War stands for Hate. Education stands 
for Truth, as Ignorance stands for Error. 
Freedom stands for Justice, as Slavery 
stands for injustice. In the magnifi- 
cent elevation and diffusion among 
mankind to-day of love, truth and free- 
dom, how can we fail to perceive very 
real and very plain signs of the coming 
of the Son of Man into his kingdom; of 
concrete and imminent answer to man's 
age-long aspiration and age-long prayer: 
"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, 
on Earth as it is in Heaven ?" 

Most distinct, to the author's mind, 
are the signs afforded in the marvelous 
march of modern scientific research, 
discovery and invention, and the rapid- 
ity with which the achievement of 
larger knowledge and larger power by 
any one man in any one part of the 
world becomes the possession of hu- 
manity, understood, prized and indefin- 
itely expanded in application and use, 



312 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



the world over. Yesterday the patient 
experiments of an obscure and unknown 
professor of chemistry, in the Univer- 
sity of Wiirzburg in Bavaria, resulted in 
the discovery of a potency, theretofore 
unknown, not even dreamed of, in the 
atmosphere of our globe, through 
which certain rays penetrate organic 
matter and other solid, opaque sub- 
stances, just as other rays pass through 
glass. To-day, that professors name 
is a household word, and his discovery 
known, tested and applied the world 
over, enriching not only one man, one 
king, one nation, or one society, but all 
mankind and to a degree beyond the 
measuring power of money. "All flesh" 
is literally "changed in the twinkling of 
an eye." 

Our daily, almost hourly increase of 
knowledge as to the potencies and 
properties of a substance so abundantly 
and universally diffused, so available 
and so inexhaustible that "free as air" 
has passed into a proverb, can barely be 
touched on here. An entire lecture 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



313 



might be profitably devoted to the ex- 
position of a single phase of this sub- 
ject. We must pass over with bare 
mention the rich and fascinating field 
of the connection between invisible 
etheric vibrations and their materializa- 
tion in form and color, movement and 
music. Only briefest reference may 
be made to the demonstration, by our 
own Professor Langley, that the capa- 
city of this tenuous atmosphere to sup- 
port material bodies in motion is such 
as to allow of the propulsion of such 
bodies with an expenditure of force in 
inverse ratio to the speed, so that it will 
actually be easier and cheaper to travel 
at the rate of 200 miles an hour than at 
the rate of 100 miles; and when the 
problem of control and direction is 
solved, the trip across the Atlantic may 
be made in as many hours as it now 
takes days, and at a cost not greater than 
that of a railway journey from New 
York to Boston. Let me stop in passing 
to call attention to the significance, in 
connection with our thought of bodily 



3M THE LIVING CHRIST. 

immortalization, of a discovery now at- 
tracting much attention in England. 
This is the remarkable utilization by 
Professor Dewar of the law or princi- 
ple, established by a French chemist 
nearly six years ago, of the liquefaction 
of atmospheric air. 

Beyond all other "causes of death" is 
that described in the ghastly witticism 
as "stoppage of breath." In even the 
most material sense, as in the most 
spiritual, "the breath is the life." Liquid 
air, we are told, can now be turned out 
in unmeasured volume, so that it may 
be imbibed or absorbed under earth 
or water; wherever and whenever inha- 
lation is defective or impossible. It 
may be swallowed as water. Where a 
patient is so weak or wasted that he 
can neither breathe nor swallow, liquid 
air, in unlimited quantity and of the 
purest quality, may be administered to 
him through the millions of pores in 
the skin, by simply placing him in a 
bath-tub filled with the most delight- 
fully invigorating liquid imaginable. 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



315 



Does it not seem that this invention 
alone is going to make dying well nigh 
impossible? 

The marriage of spirit and matter, 
earth and air, new heavens and new 
earth, indeed, stands out clearly in 
the prediction made by Nicola Tesla, 
probably the most eminent of living 
electricians, that within another year a 
means will be discovered whereby "the 
earth's electrical discharge can be dis- 
tributed, and electrical waves efficiently 
transmitted, without the use of cables 
or wires." 

Beginning with that industrial revo- 
lution, which, — rising like the fabled 
geni from Watts' tea-kettle, — ushered 
in the century now closing, and which so 
completely transformed means and 
methods of production that the increase 
in the world's wealth (speaking materi- 
ally simply) in the past 100 years has been 
greater than that of the preceding 2,000 
years, we have advanced in knowledge 
and mastery of nature's forces with 
ever accelerating strides. It would be 



316 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



strange indeed if social and political 
forms, which have always been the lat- 
est to change, had not still to be 
adapted to this marvelous advance in 
industrial conditions. An inevitable ac- 
companiment, therefore, of our progress 
has been a glaring inequality in the dis- 
tribution of the wealth created by our 
remarkable increase in productiveness, 
and a consequent intensification of the 
evils of poverty. We are, however, 
waking up to a sense of the situation in 
this respect, and to the need of applying 
our best enlightenment and intelligence 
(to say nothing of love and humanity) 
to a re-arrangemeut which shall remedy 
this evil. 

When we are told, on the indisputa- 
ble and impartial authority of our offi- 
cial United States Census Reports, that 
"Twenty per cent, of the wealth of the 
United States is owned by 3-100 of one 
per cent, of the population, seventy-one 
percent, by nine per cent, of the families, 
and only twenty-nine per cent, of the 
wealth is owned by the remaining ninety- 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 317 



one percent, of the population/' we can 
hardly blind ourselves to the fact that 
there is "something wrong," something 
horribly wrong, in the system of dis- 
tribution responsible for such results. 

Mr. Tesla believes that the conveying 
of motive power, in the manner he men- 
tions, from its source to any place how- 
ever remote, "would increase many 
times the productive capacity of man- 
kind. " Before we can properly avail 
ourselves of this splendid acquisition, 
we must first adjust the conditions of 
our social order, and our political or- 
ganization in accordance with an intel- 
ligent recognition of oneness — of the 
fact that not only the earth and the ful- 
ness thereof is the Lord's, but that 
all advance in power to realize its ful- 
ness arises not from the effort of any 
one individual or class of individuals, 
but from the advance of mankind, toil- 
ing and striving through countless 
generations, — an inheritance to which 
all men are rightfully joint heirs. 



3i8 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



Not the least of the signs that herald 
the coming of Christ will be found in the 
new and larger recognition to-day of 
woman's rightful place by man's side 
in equal freedom and equal power. 
Since woman was taken from man's 
side, in that far time told of in our an- 
cient books; since that first murder in 
which the woman Abel was slain by the 
man Cain, with whom she had till then 
been brother and equal, — that murder, 
the blood of which is still crying to 
Heaven, not for vengeance but for repa- 
ration, — humanity has surely sounded 
the depths consequent on the separa- 
tion of the sexes, depths only possible, 
perhaps, through the subjugation and 
the slaughter of the mother sex. But 
soul-saddening as the realization of the 
awfulness of these depths must be, is 
there not consolation in the thought that 
in our fall, heights not less than depths 
have been revealed to us? 

When woman comes back to man's 
side, and man to woman's, will not both 
be infinitely richer and stronger, and 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 319 



finer and grander in every way, for the 
ages of wrong and suffering in separa- 
tion, by which the best as well as the 
worst qualities of each have been de- 
veloped and strengthened? 

"Marriage a la mode" is being dis- 
placed by the union of soul affinities. 
Love is coming of age. Purity in the 
marital relation, as well as outside of 
it is being demanded more and more. 
Sensing the blessings of freedom, 
through economic independence, wives 
and mothers will refuse longer to be 
slaves. 

That men and women are here and 
there, in all lands, coming together 
and joining hands on a plane of pure, 
unselfish love, is, after all, the sign of 
signs of the coming of the Son of Man. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH. 

The Law of Love: Its Expression in 
Sex the Key to Immortalization. 

"Love one another" is not the com- 
mand of Jesus merely, nor of Jehovah 
in a burning bush; not the injunction 
simply of human prophet or law-giver. 
It is the immutable law of all life 
throughout the universe; the law in- 
scribed in the heavens, and written on 
sea and land, ages ere man had hewn 
tables of stone from the mountain-side, 
or written his word in books. It is the 
law that holds seas and mountains in 
their places, that creates suns and plan- 
ets and that governs their marvelous 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 321 



order and procession. The moment we 
obey in human society the simple com- 
mandment that we "Love one another/' 
that moment will usher in the miilen- 
ium — will begin a reign of health and 
harmony, of peace and progress, not only 
in the social organism, which represents 
humanity in the large, but also and 
equally in the individual organism, in 
the body of flesh and blood, of each and 
every one of us. 

Balzac makes his Louis Lambert say: 
"We must needs embrace the whole 
world before we can remake it." He 
is certainly right in assuming that one 
cannot love the whole world — cannot 
love at all — if love does not find ex- 
pression. It is clear also that love's 
highest mission is the re-making of the 
world — the remaking of the aims and 
ideals, the laws and customs, the man- 
ners and habits of human society. It is 
in and through these that man expresses 
his nature, and by which he is in turn 
formed and influenced, as the life of 
the lower world is moulded by physical 



322 THE LIVING CHRIST. 

atmosphere and environment. To 
"embrace the whole world" seems a 
stupendous undertaking; difficult even 
of conception. We can readily enough 
understand the love which is expressed 
in the embrace of the nearest and 
dearest and which, extending beyond 
this, embraces one's immediate family. 
By the great test of self-sacrifice, "even 
unto death," men and women have 
proved their love of country, love of 
religion, love for a cause or an idea 
which represented to their minds Truth, 
Justice, Freedom, and so the welfare 
of humanity. But this is not "embrac- 
ing the whole world," and that love for 
the whole world which is to re-make it 
in Love's truer image and likeness re- 
quires that we shall embrace the whole 
world. How shall this be possible to 
us? 

The "new commandment" of Jesus, 
rightly understood, solves the problem. 
He tells us how to embrace the whole 
world. In loving one another, we may 
express, most fully and perfectly, the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 323 

largest and most inclusive love- "Love 
one another" does not mean love 
thousands or millions. It does not 
mean love your own family, or your own 
country only; to love the poor and hate 
the rich, to love the great and despise 
the humble, to love the virtuous and 
condemn the wicked. One and another 
make two. There are only two in the 
world, after all, and these two are Man 
and Woman. They become one when 
they truly love; they are two only that 
they may the more perfectly and joy- 
ously come into realization of their 
oneness. 

The love of a man for a woman, of a 
woman for a man, in its highest, holiest 
development, — is the love of man for 
woman — of all mankind for all woman- 
kind — the love of the whole woman for 
the whole man. Obedience to the com- 
mand "love one another" and to the re- 
quirement that we express that love by 
embracing one another, so embracing 
the world, is made simple and easy by 
the divine plan which has divided 



324 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



mankind into two sexes — much easier 
than if we were divided into three or 
more sexes, or all made of one sex. 
We cannot be too often reminded that 
God's image in Man is to be found most 
perfectly reflected in the maleness and 
femaleness in which God created man: 
in the duality in unity and the unity in 
duality which sex so beautifully pre- 
sents. These two sides of the one reality, 
while most perfectly developed in hu- 
manity, are equally evident in all na- 
ture: in force and matter, in motion and 
rest, in fire and water, in air and earth, 
— each always complementary to the 
other, giving and taking in a constant 
interchange which makes each and both 
more and more. 

The sacredness of sex is most perfect- 
ly guarded and preserved by full and 
clear recognition of its true nature and 
meaning, especially on the spiritual 
side. This sacredness is assuredly vio- 
lated and lost, and the divine in us 
dragged in the mire, by suppression and 
secrecy as to the nature and meaning 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



325 



of sex. The true ark of the covenant, 
in which the spirit of God reposes, is 
the human body. The sacrilege and 
the sin by which death entered the 
world, — and with it all suffering and 
sorrow, anguish and crime, — was the 
violation of womanhood and mother- 
hood. Womanhood was lost in the 
subjugation of the one sex; manhood in 
the enslavement of will to sense, spirit 
to matter, which changed the sons of 
God into sons of slaves. 

A chivalry of slave-masters is para- 
doxical; free men are impossible with- 
out free mothers. We can have no more 
perfect indication of the character of 
a people than the condition of their 
women. All history shows that progress, 
advance, and enlightenment are found 
in the times and countries in which 
woman has been most truly reverenced. 
Reverence is not shown by shutting up 
its objects in convents or harems, nor by 
the hardly less confining and deforming 
restrictions of social custom; but by that 
true and natural development of all our 



326 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



human powers which is made possible 
only in unrestricted freedom of growth, 
in steadily enlarging spheres of activity. 
Ignorance, weakness, corruption and 
decay are the marks of a civilization in 
which woman is robbed of her humanity, 
reduced to the position of drudge or 
plaything hemmed in, restricted, and 
stamped inferior by her sons and 
brothers. 

It is love, then, which is to redeem 
and remake the world. It is love 
which is to put immortality upon this 
mortal, incorruption upon this corrupt- 
ible. That redemption of our bodies, 
that "salvation of all flesh/' which is 
to immortalize every one of us here 
and now, — making us forever victo- 
rious over death, — is at hand in man's 
clearer comprehension of the divine 
command, "Love one another." 

The dawning of the second advent of 
the Christ, — of which the first advent 
was promise and prophecy, — is already 
being ushered in, the world over, by 
changes in woman's legal and social 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 327 



status, and by the embodiment in 
our social life and social system of 
higher ideals of marriage; ideals which 
mark the passing away of that sinful 
and slavish "generation," by which lust 
has so long been consecrated and ex- 
alted, — love defiled and debased. 

The final change may seem sudden: 
"In the twinkling of an eye, all flesh shall 
know me that I live," prophesied Jesus. 
He foresaw the natural, if far off, com- 
pletion of the work then so splendidly 
begun; the fruitage of that tree of life 
whose seed he planted. Coming, how- 
ever, as the result, not of miracle, but 
of law, social evolution has at last 
brought us to the point of development 
in which this coming of Christ to all 
mankind becomes possible. Its coming 
is marked by slow but steady advance, 
along many lines, throughout the last 
nineteen centuries of human history. 

Love is the herald of the millenium; 
in loving one another, we shall help to 
bring it in. The coming of Christ into 
his kingdom, his personal re-appearance 



3 28 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



to the whole world in the Man Jesus, is 
a manifestation dependent on the re- 
generation of the race. This regenera- 
tion is being accomplished through the 
opening of the human heart and mind 
to the recognition and expression of 
Truth. 

The quality of love is all important. 
On this point, I cannot do better than to 
quote a passage from a writer of rare 
power and illumination: 

"In pttrity all power resides. Fire 
renders all things pure. It reduces, re- 
fines, purifies and illuminates all things. 
Fire flows from love. But you do not 
know what love is. You think it hath 
something of sex in it; and so it has, 
for sex is a symbol of it. The ecstacy 
of a virgin soul, when first bap- 
tized by the contact of a spirit in 
harmony, is but a poor expression of 
love in its abstruse sense; but it is the 
best I have. Love is not the soul, but 
it is the highest and most ecstatic emo- 
tion the soul can feel. It moves the 
whole sensorium of the soul, and by its 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



329 



emotion evolves a spiritual fire that 
burns in the nerves like a volcano. . . . 
Beware of the fire if you are impure. It 
will leave not a vestige of soul, mind, or 
body. Love builds up or destroys. Slow, 
lingering decay is as certain as rapid 
combustion. Nothing comes out of 
God's crucible but immortal beings."* 

As of old, the Avatar, the Saviour of 
our race, will come from the land we 
call the East, the cradle of our race, 
the last home of the fifth race from 
which we spring, and whose surviving 
wisdom and virtue have afforded a 
nucleus for the building of the Golden 
City whence Christ shall come. He will 
come as the lightning cometh, from the 
East unto the West, and in great power 
and majesty. That is, he will follow 
the line of humanity's age-long march 
from Asia across Europe, across the 
Atlantic Ocean and across the American 
Continent; but his progress will be like 
lightning in its swiftness, like lightning 

*F. B. Dowd in "The Temple of the Rosy Cross.*' 
The Temple Publishing Company, Denver, Colo. 



330 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



also in that his carriage and his ship 
will be borne and propelled by elec- 
tricity. He will come in power and ma- 
jesty as befits a king coming to his 
coronation, attended not by soldiery, — 
horse, foot or dragoons, — but by a splen- 
did company of illustrious compan- 
ions and co-workers. And all along the 
route he will be hailed as the long- 
looked for, eagerly expected and uni- 
versally recognized Redeemer, by a 
grateful race, knowing its redemption; 
by an organized humanity, in which 
love shall rule by right divine, and 
Jesus be proclaimed King, as Mankind's 
supreme personification of Love, the 
Universal Republic's well-loved First 
Citizen. 

He will come to America; in this land 
will be placed the central seat of his 
rule. Upon this continent, the mighti- 
est civilization the world has ever seen 
is now building. Man's rights as man 
are here being surely and strongly 
established, To the new nationality, 
so marvelously evolving here, all the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 



nations of the earth are contributing 
their best. That combination, which will 
thus contain all, will dominate all. The 
developed American will be the perfect 
flower of humanity, and we shall repay 
our debt to the nations of the world 
by giving them back all they shall have 
lent us, with interest, in a Federation 
of the World, an Americanized race. 

America is another name for Destiny. 
Here the world's problems are being 
worked out in the forge of experience. 

The New Order is building on a solid 
basis of facts, which only our vast ter- 
ritory, our geographical position, our 
enormous national resources, our varied 
climate and mixed population could 
afford. 

The center and metropolis of the 
continent in that day will, therefore, be 
the center of civilization — the world's 
capital in a larger sense than was or is 
true of Athens or Rome, Paris or Lon- 
don. That center, the author is con- 
vinced, will be in the State of Colorado 
and the City of Denver. Here the City 



332 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



of God, descending out of Heaven, will 
find earthly place; here the Throne of 
Christ will be set up; here will begin the 
Millennial Reign; the Kingdom of God 
will come and His will be done on Earth 
as it is in Heaven, when there shall be 
New Heavens and New Earth, indeed. 
When? 

The hour has not yet come to an- 
nounce the time definitely. We are in 
the last decade of a century that has 
seen marvelous advance; a period in 
which the transition from the old to the 
new order of things is marked by a 
struggle of daily increasing intensity 
between the forces which make for Jus- 
tice and those which make for Injustice, 
between Truth and Falsehood, Right 
and Wrong. As always, the struggle 
will be decided in favor of Justice, 
Truth and Right. This means the 
opening of the new century, the twenti- 
eth century, now only four years hence, 
with new life, growing out of increased 
sense of power in the People, of power 
in Unity and power in Truth. With the 



THE LIVING CHRIST. 333 



century thus ushered in, one world- 
cycle will be closed and another begun. 
Almost from the first, — from the morn- 
ing of New Years Day, 1901, — recogni- 
tion of the Living Christ and of the 
fuller, the unending life of all men in 
him, will spread. A sense of expecta- 
tion will be awakened, first in America, 
then in Europe, and lastly in Africa and 
Asia. Mankind all over the globe will 
draw closer together in mutual under- 
standing and mutual love. It will soon 
become a century of active preparation 
for the glorious event to which it shall 
lead, — and a century will prove none to 
long a time for the work before us. In 
its joy and light and glory, the hundred 
years will pass more quickly than ten 
years pass now. 

Time is measured not by years, but 
by emotions, by events. There is much 
to be done, but our rate of advance is 
ever accelerating. Months will be 
marked, as we proceed, by achievements 
that now seem to require years. Noth- 
ing is lost, and every forward step 



334 THE LIVING CHRIST. 



brings us into fuller realization of 
Eternal Truth. 

The author's message to all whose 
minds receive this truth is the message 
of John the Baptist, the voice of one 
crying in the wilderness: 

"Prepare ye the way of the Lord; 
make straight his path!" 

Prepare his way in your heart. If 
he has already come to you, prepare 
his way in the heart of humanity, so 
that, with the first light of the Christ- 
mas morning that ushers in the reign 
of two thousand years, we may hear 
men and angels join in the acclaim, 
"Glory to God in the highest: Peace 
on Earth, good will to men!" — that 
we may, from this day forward, put 
forth every effort to bring a redeemed 
race into the knowledge that 

"CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED." 



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